KISS AND LENZ FRONT ROW FOR RACE 1 IN ZOLDER
Norbert Kiss claimed his ninth pole of the season, whilst a final flying lap improvement put Sascha Lenz on the front row beside him.
Kiss led the way throughout the qualifying sessions, with pole never really looking in doubt. It was the second-place spot, usually occupied by Jochen Hahn, that was up for debate, as track evolution was quite severe.
With the colder and rainier conditions of this morning leaving sunshine in their wake, it meant the track was constantly improving, and being the last to set a lap time in the session could turn out to be a major advantage.
This was first seen with René Reinert, who in both Q1 and Q2 looked like he was going to be eliminated early. Leaving his best lap until the last moment gave him supreme pace on the circuit, and he sailed through both qualifying sessions without breaking too much of a sweat.
Lenz seemed to pick up on this trend, as did a few of the other competitors. We usually see Q3 consist of one flying lap per driver, but Kiss, Hahn, Lenz and Antonio Albacete pushed on for a second. Only Lenz was able to find a lap time improvement to demote Hahn off the front row. He will share the second row with 900th race starter Albacete.
Albeit impressive to utilise track evolution in Q1 and Q2, it was a little too much for Reinert to replicate in Q3 and he settled for a P5 start. Upsetting the Titan’s day, Clemens Hecker not only eliminated Steffi Halm from Q3, but also took class pole for the first race of the weekend.
With the Chrome championship so tight, every little advantage on your competitors is especially important. We could really see the contender separated from those who have had sporadically good weekends at Zolder, laying the narrative down as we head into the final two rounds of the season.
Mark Taylor will be looking to not only try and demote Hecker from his class lead in Race 1, but stay with him in the overall positions fight to stay within reaching distance come Race 2’s reverse grid.
Luke Garrett had a great qualifying session, taking P2 in the Chrome standings. He will start P8 alongside Halm, separating Hecker from Taylor with Luis Recuenco also between them in P9. Taylor lines up P10 with race-by-race entry Jonathan André P11, and Chrome championship leader Bradley Smith in P12.
Smith had a good Q1 session, but did not take part in Q2. Everyone is hoping there is no outlasting issue with his truck and he’ll be good to take to the grid for Race 1.
Track evolution caught José Eduardo Rodrigues out, who found himself eliminated from Q1. He will start between Stefan Kursch (P13) and John Newell (P15) on the penultimate row of the grid. Newell will be disappointed with that performance, especially knowing all of his Chrome championship rivals are ahead of him.
Disaster struck for Steffen Faas in the warm up session this morning when he failed to complete a lap before coming back into the pits. He spent most of Most battling a fuel injector issue that saw him score zero points from that round. It would be a shame to see him suffer another weekend like that. The German will take P16 on the grid after getting approval from the stewards he can start the race.
Due to illness, Christan Ruppert is not competing this weekend.
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