Photo: TCR

Luca Filippi heads Hyundai 1-2-3 in Spielberg qualifying

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Hyundai swept the top three in TCR Europe series qualifying at the Red Bull Ring on Saturday morning, with Luca Filippi snatching Race 1 pole position, his first ever in the series, while championship leader Julien Briché continued his Spielberg struggle and will start the weekend’s two races from the lower midfield.

Ex-single seater star Filippi came out on top to lead fellow Hyundai racers Josh Files and Nelson Panciatici at the head of the timesheets in the decisive Q2 segment, with Davit Kajaia the best of the rest in fourth place for Cupra (PCR Sport).

Practice pace-setter Dan Lloyd completed the top five aboard his Honda Civic TCR, some four tenths off the leading times.

WTCR veteran Tom Coronel was tenth fastest in Q2 to seal pole for the partially reversed-grid Race 2. The flying Dutchman (Honda) will share the front row in Sunday’s race with WestCoast Racing’s touring car altmeister Gianni Morbidelli.

Qualifying featured a couple of notable developments. There was a red-flag stoppage with 3:27 minutes remaining of Q1 when Olli Kangas went off at Turn 1, setting up a late flurry of laps when the session was subsequently resumed.

It was Files who eventually came out on top on the Q1 charts, leading a Hyundai 1-2 ahead of Filippi, while championship leader Briché could only manage 18th in the leading Peugeot as he failed to make the top 12 Q2 cut.

Fellow championship contender and Peugeot racer Aurélien Comte was another notable Q2 absentee, taking 21st in the opening segment, as was Santiago Urrutia who narrowly missed progression by just 0.088s. The WRT Audi man wound up 13th, but will have to serve a five-place grid penalty in the first race this afternoon after causing an incident at the previous round at Spa.

Race 1 of the weekend takes place at 13.30 CEST.