As the European winter continues, the eVirtual championship moves to the EuroSpeedway Lausitz in Brandenburg, Germany. This race marks the halfway point in this year’s championship and with no clear favourite emerging for either title, there is still plenty at stake in Round 6. Q1The first shock of the day came early. K8ley were still in Q1 after Leo Brzyski’s mistake saw them score no points in Donington. To the shock and disappointment of the team, they suffered their first and second DNQ’s of the season, with both of their drivers unable to meet the pace of the other Q1 runners. This opened the door for some different drivers to progress through to Q2, but sadly Lamborghini were still unable to capitalise with Agostino still 0.5 kph away from the all important 6th place and Campos much further back. Up at the front of the session it was Nick Addison in the Hyundai again leading the way for his rookie team. In good news for Hyundai J-P Raatikainen was able to shake off last week’s DNQ to sneak into Q2 just ahead of Gianluca di Stefano. Fortunately for Maserati they still had Gabriele Garcia, with a strong run for the Brazilian putting him in 3rd. Opel were strong once more, with a solid 2nd and 5th led by Vocquelin. The final car to make it into Q2 was Thunderhead’s Drake Davies, with the team showing its quality on ovals once again. The less said about Izaya Yuki’s performance the better. Q2Into Q2 and it was the familiar sight of the Manziel Porsche’s heading the top of the table, with Steven Kasami leading Zvironas in a 1-2. But a search down the ladder saw a surprise, with championship leader Oleksandr Zozulya well down in 19th. The Ukrainian looked unable to get his car switched on in the cold weather, leaving him and the Downton team scratching their heads to work out where it had gone wrong for the front runner. Rivals Jaguar were looking stronger, with van Snelheid on the coattails of the Manziel’s in 3rd and Thunström sneaking into Q3 in 10th. Porsche were also strong and were able to record a double Q3 appearance as well in 5th and 9th. In amongst the front runners, BMW’s Kip Maxwell was also competitive. A first time from the Brit placed his BMW into 4th, marking him as one to watch in Q3. Another driver impressing was Renault’s Aron Einarsson in 6th, although his teammate Thunder was unlucky to miss out in 11th. Also disappointed to be sitting on the sidelines were Östberg and Opel’s Sebastien Vocquelin, who both came close to matching Thunström’s time and putting the Swede out of Q3. It was also a poor qualifying for Lada, with Sam Hudson mired down in 24th and Urmo Kruuda still significantly down the order in 16th. Q3Into Q3 we went, with 10 cars separated by less than 2kph the fight for pole was on. Sadly for Jochem van Snelheid, he was unable to recapture his pace from the previous session and put in a poor lap, placing him 10th. There seemed to be two fights in this session, one for pole and another for 6th place. The 2 Porsche’s were in the mix for this latter battle, as was Ethan Matthews, but they were all beaten by Renault’s Aron Einarsson in a strong day for the Icelandic man. From these bottom 5 there was a jump in pace to the leading battle. Ryota Yoshida was one of those fighting for pole and he set the early pace with 104.2. Kip Maxwell was unable to beat it, but Thunström along with the two Manziel’s were able to jump ahead of the Bentley after the opening laps of the session. This was not the end of the session for Yoshida however, as he dug in for another fast lap. With a 147.1, he jumped to the top of the times and he could have been forgiven for thinking that was the end of it. Unfortunately Dominykas Zvironas had other plans. Perhaps determined to make up for his underperformance compared to Kasami so far, the Lithuanian was on a tear. With a 147.3, Zvironas was on pole, and no one else was able to challenge him as he took his 2nd career pole, his 1st with the Manziel team. With Zozulya mired down the grid, there could be opportunities for others to gain points in the title race tomorrow, but they will have to get past Dominykas Zvironas if they want to win the German eV-Prix. Final Classification
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