Photo: TCR Europe

Andreas Bäckman takes first career pole position at Oschersleben

By

Target Competition’s Andreas Bäckman has taken his first pole position in the TCR Europe Touring Car Series, obliterating the previous lap record by six-tenths of a second in his Hyundai i30 N TCR, and will start ahead of Brutal Fish Racing Team’s Dan Lloyd for Race 1 this afternoon.

Bäckman showed his pace late in the first qualifying session, when he took over from WestCoast Racing’s Gianni Morbidelli, with the Italian only briefly holding the top spot in his Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR.

Bäckman lapped the track with a time of 1:30.078 in Q1, while his first run in Q2 was slightly slower; but as the field headed out for a second run, he went quicker still, taking the all-time lap record with a time of 1:30.017, faster than the 1:30.666 set by Harald Proczyk at the TCR Germany championship season opener earlier this year.

Dan Lloyd set a late improvement to go second, three-tenths of a second behind, with Santiago Urrutia close by in his WRT Audi RS 3 LMS, putting three different manufacturers in the top three.

Nelson Panciatici was fourth fastest in his M Racing Hyundai, ahead of Gilles Magnus’ Comtoyou Racing Audi, with Jessica Bäckman making a last-minute improvement to go sixth, finishing just ahead of her new team-mate Dominik Baumann.

Tom Coronel was eighth in his Boutsen Ginion Racing Honda, so is well-placed for the reversed grid Race 2, with championship leader Josh Files down in ninth in his Hyundai. Alex Morgan secured the Race 2 pole position, despite his Wolf-Power Cupra being stopped on track.

M1RA Hyundai driver Luca Engstler ran wide at Turn 1 on his first lap, and didn’t rejoin the session, with Gianni Morbidelli also aborting his first lap and not coming back out, so Engstler and Morbidelli qualified outside of the top ten without setting a time.

Mat’o Homola was also disappointed to miss the top 12, the only one of the five Target Competition Hyundais to do so.

It was another tough qualifying session for the Peugeots, despite their 30kg reduction in compensation weight this weekend. DG Sport Compétition’s Aurélien Comte was the best-placed in 16th, while former championship leader Julien Briché was 22nd of the 28 runners.

The first race follows at 13:40 CEST.