Mehdi Bennani snatches last-gasp pole at Nürburgring
Mehdi Bennani struck late to grab pole position for the opening race of the weekend at the Nürburgring Nordschleife as Audi locked out the front row of the grid.
The Comtoyou Racing driver posted a time of 8:50.257 to edge out team-mate Gilles Magnus at the very end of the 30-minute session to usurp the Lynk & Co of Santiago Urrutia.
Urrutia will line up third for Saturday’s first race, ahead of Cyan Racing team-mate Yann Ehrlacher whon was visibly frustrated as a team strategy call in light of puncture risks prevented him from setting a final lap-time.
Tyre concerns dominated the morning, with an additional test session organised for drivers in conjunction with the FIA Technical Delegate to give teams an opportunity to test tyre from a different production batch from Goodyear.
Cyan Racing opted to conduct the test on wet tyres, experiencing no issues, while the Hondas ran slick tyres with Néstor Girolami suffering a splitter issue.
As qualifying started – albeit after a 10-minute delay – there were more issues, as Yvan Muller suffered a delamination at the end of his first flying lap.
Meanwhile, early pacesetter Attila Tassi had bodywork fly off his Team Engstler Honda Civic Type-R down the Döttinger Höhe, affecting his final attempt. Girolami also had a portion of his Honda’s bodywork blow out on the same straight as the Argentinian was on course to set the fastest time of the session.
Girolami did manage the fifth best time despite the issue, but dropped to eighth by the end as others improved.
After the first flying laps, it was the Lynk & Co car firmly in control as Thed Björk initially went fastest before being beaten by Urrutia. Ehrlacher then improved on his time to go 0.079s quicker than Urrutia to make it a Cyan Racing sweep of the top three.
Ehrlacher had wanted to head back out onto the track for a final attempt but, like Urrutia and Björk, remained in the pits until the end of the session.
It proved a costly move as both Magnus and Bennani were going faster once back onto the Nordschleife.
Fortunately for them, they were ahead of Zengö Motorsport’s Rob Huff on the track when the Cupra León Competición driver went off at Metzgefeld, bringing out the yellow flags. Huff lost control of his car at the sweeping left-hander and looped it into the barriers, suffering damage to the front end.
Meanwhile, Magnus was on a charge and went fastest, with Bennani in tow.
Magnus had barely crossed the line before Bennani wrestled the pole time from his Belgian team-mate, with no other significant improvements following.
A disgruntled Ehrlacher was therefore fourth behind Urrutia while BRC Squadra Corse’s Mikel Azcona was fifth in the best placed Hyundai Elantra N TCR.
Björk was sixth ahead of Comtoyou Racing’s Nathanaël Berthon, with Girolami and Norbert Michelisz behind.
Despite his tyre issue, Muller rounded out the top 10 and therefore will start from pole position for the second race on Saturday with Michelisz alongside.
Race 1 is scheduled to take place on Saturday at 10:00 CEST.
