Franco Girolami beats Jack Young to Monza pole position
PSS Racing Team driver Franco Girolami beat Honda colleague Jack Young of Brutal Fish Racing by just one hundredth of a second to claim the pole position for Race 1 at Monza, host of the penultimate TCR Europe round of 2021.
Girolami set a best lap time of 1:57.073 with just three minutes to go to score the pole position ahead of Young, with Sébastien Loeb Racing’s Felice Jelmini (Hyundai Elantra N TCR) in third place, 0.260 seconds off the pace.
Comtoyou Racing’s Tom Coronel qualified in fourth place, seven-tenths behind the Argentinean, with Spanish driver Isidro Callejas, driving a Honda Civic Type R TCR of Brutal Fish, in fifth place.
Dusan Borkovic of Comtoyou Racing was sixth ahead of points leader Mikel Azcona (Cupra) who could only manage seventh place.
Peugeot 308TCR driver Jimmy Clairet finished in eighth place ahead of Janík Motorsport’s Mat’o Homola.
Nicolas Baert, who initially set the eighth fastest time, had a lap time deleted for exceeding the track limits at Turn 11, dropping him to tenth place.
The Q1 session was halted with a red flag with barely 17 seconds of the session to go as Rubén Fernández went off into the the gravel at Turn 9 and had to be recovered.
Sébastien Loeb Racing drivers Sami Taoufik and Mehdi Bennani missed making it to Q2, qualifying in 15th and 20th position respectively for both races.
Azcona is still on top of the championship on 320 points, 31 ahead of Girolami.
The start of Race 1 is scheduled for 13:05 CEST on Saturday afternoon.
