Clean air key to Yann Ehrlacher’s TCR World Tour pole

Cyan Racing’s Yann Ehrlacher ignored the tactics others used in TCR World Tour qualifying at Spa-Francorchamps, and it ultimately proved crucial to claiming pole.

A lot of drivers backed up in the final sector of the lap as they sought to get space ahead of them ready for a run a pole, or to have a margin where they could benefit from a slipstream but not get stuck in trouble, while Ehrlacher decided to just go flat out and hope he would not come across those going deliberately slowly.

“For us, it’s always good to get a tow because we are a sitting duck in the straights. So it’s always good if we can get some avantage with top speed. But I prefer to go with no tow, and secure a lap with being alone in Q2,” he explained to TouringCarTimes.

“Q1 was just a lap to be in the top 12, and that’s what we did. We knew we had the pace to be in the top ten, it was just to be like not doing track limits, being careful on this because Raidillon is not that easy flat, Blanchimont either. So it’s easy to **** up a lap with a track limit.

“But at the end we focus everything on Q1 to put this lap on the board. I put all my sectors together to get this, so it was maybe the best I could achieve here around Spa. I’m quite pleased about the result, not really about taking the 40kg for the next race, but at some point we need to take weight to get points. So I got 15 points now from the qualifying, I’m happy with it, and now we will see how we can deal with the good race pace.

Ehrlacher said he could “feel it coming” that a messy situation was arising with drivers going excessively slowly before starting flying laps.

“When I saw everyone going on the outlap, I was like ‘ah, those guys, they will fuck up’. I just passed them to make sure I’m clear. Because they were playing too much, and at some point it’s a bit of a shit game to do.

“So I prefer to say ‘okay, I go for my lap alone, and I take the risk myself’. Because there’s no point to wait and then ending up in the shit. So yeah, happy with it.”

Having set the pace in qualifying, is Ehrlacher confident he will be able to make his tyres last up front in Race 1 this weekend?

“Confident? I’m not that much. I think we’ll be alright if we manage it well. For sure it will be tough. I think the Hondas will have consistent pace, from what they showed in free practice two yesterday, so it’s going to be tough to keep him behind through the mid- to the end of the race. We will really need to take care of our tyres, without being too close to [them] in the straight where he can get a tow. So a lot of compromise to do.”

His team-mate Ma Qing Hua took a similar strategy for qualifying, and credited his engineer for picking out the best moment to start his final run in the busier Q1 segmnt of qualifying. A clean run was also important to him as he had not got to do a new tyre run in practice so was not sure of his pace.