Photo: TCR South America

Raphael Reis scores pole in weather-affected qualifying at Mercedes

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Raphael Reis of W2 Pro GP Team claimed the pole position in Saturday’s TCR South America qualifying session at Mercedes Autodrome in Uruguay, a session red flagged once due to a heavy rainstorm.

Cupra drivers Galid Osman and Reis dominated the Q1 seasson, with Rafael Suzuki (Peugeot 308TCR) in third for PMO Racing, while Leonel Pernía (Peugeot) was fourth ahead of Mattias Rossi (Toyota Corolla TCR) and Pedro Cardoso (Peugeot).

Rain started falling over the Mercedes Autodrome with a couple of minutes to go in Q1, with the field returning to the pits just in time to change to wet tyres and prepare the Q2.

The second part of the qualifying was declared wet, as a heavy storm and strong winds surrounded the track.

Casella set the first reference lap time, but was off the track during his following attempt, as also did Cardoso. Most drivers had issues with standing water on the track, sliding and spinning at Turn 5.

The conditions forced the session to be red-flagged after just three minutes.

“The problem is that we are under parc fermé regulations, so we cannot change the setup in the cars,” Sebastian Martino, manager of Squadra Martino, explained. “So we started the session with a dry setup and now we continue with it, but with wet tyres.”

The session was resumed at 16:11 local time and the improvement of the conditions was proved by Fontana, stealing the top spot on his first attempt.

Reis pulled an incredible second sector to claim the pole position as the chequered flag was already waving with a lap time of 1:29.840, 0.213 seconds ahead of Cardoso.

Fontana was third, three-tenths off the pace, followed by Yannantuoni. Osman was fifth, 0.614 seconds behind his team-mate and pole sitter, followed by Suzuki, Baptista, and Casella. Pernía and Noceti completed the top ten.

“We were really quick with used tyres and we didn’t expect the rain,” said Reis after the qualifying. “Nobody had competed with rain in this track before, so I’m really happy with this result.”

The TCR South America field returns to the track on Sunday morning at 09:38 local time for Race 1 (14:38 CEST).