Photo: TCR Italy

Marco Butti claims season opener pole in red flagged qualifying at Imola

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Marco Butti claimed pole position for Target Competition in the 33-car strong TCR Italy season opener qualifying at Imola which was red flagged.

The Hyundai driver lapped the Italian circuit in 1:50.824, beating ALM Motorsport driver Mattias Vahtel by 0.243 seconds.

Despite driving the older generation Honda Civic, Vathel beat reigning champion Niels Langeveld in the new Honda Civic Type R FL5 by two tenths of a second.

TCR Europe champion Franco Girolami was fourth fastest for Aioka Racing and fastest of the Audi drivers, a full six tenths of a second from pole.

Felice Jelmini of PMA Motorsport was fifth fastest, 63 thousands of a second slower than fellow Audi driver Girolami.

Matteo Poloni was sixth ahead of Aggressive Team Italia driver Levente Losonczy while Junul Park rounded off the top eight for Target Competition, 1.1 seconds from pole.

The red flags were brought out at the end of the session as Michele Imberti went off at Turn 2.

The first race of the weekend starts at 15:20 CEST.