Santiago Urrutia claims pole in red flag interrupted Interlagos qualifying

Lynk & Co Cyan Racing driver Santiago Urrutia claimed pole position in a red flag interrupted FIA TCR World Tour qualifying session at Interlagos in Brazil, beating Honda driver Esteban Guerrieri by two tenths of a second.

The red flags were brought out with nine minutes left of the Q1 session as TCR South America drivers Marcos Regadas (Peugeot) and Enrique Maglione (Honda) came together heading into Turn 1.

Regadas went on the inside of Maglione who turned in, resulting in a spectacular off, with Maglione beaching his Honda deep into the tyre barriers and forcing a lengthy recovery and repair process which took about an hour.

As the chequered flag fell for the restarted Q1 session, BRC Hyundai driver Mikel Azcona found himself eliminated, missing Q2 by just 18 thousands of a second.

The Q2 session started with a spin by Toyota driver Diego Gutiérrez, who was able to recover and head back into the pits.

GOAT Racing driver Guerrieri was the first driver to top the times in Q2, only for Urrutia to become the first driver to go below 1:42 with 1:41.840.

Guerrieri was unable to respond and had to settle for second ahead of Lynk & Co’s Yann Ehrlacher in third.

Guerrieri’s team-mate Marco Butti was fourth fastest, four tenths from pole, with Hyundai driver Néstor Girolami in fifth, eight tenths behind.

Thed Björk claimed sixth ahead of the top TCR South America driver in the form of Raphael Reis (Cupra). Reis was just ahead of fellow local driver Rafael Suzuki (Peugeot).

Ma Qing Hua will join reversed grid pole sitter and points leader Norbert Michelisz on the front row for the second race. Michelisz had a scare during Q2 as he got one of his lap times deleted for exceeding track limits.

Dusan Borkovic, who topped the second free practice session, had several lap times deleted during Q2 and will start eleventh on both races.

The first race of the weekend starts at 11:10 local time/16:10 CEST.