Back to ovals, back to the Netherlands - for the first time since 2016, a tier 1 virtual motorsport series returns to the country. eVirtual rolled over to Venray Raceway for the 3rd of 4th oval races, and it saw yet another fascinating qualifying session. Q1After K8ley's stunning Imola round, they were expected to continue setting the pace, but the first major shock of the weekend happened when Kasami tagged the wall and broke his suspension. Having placed only 9th at the time, he failed to qualify for the race, a huge hero to zero fall. On the other hand, Lamborghini's day got off to a fantastic start. Ledesma and Agostino were impressive and took 1st and 2nd - even better, both drivers felt confident they could go even faster. Down at BMW meanwhile, Haugland's patchy form continued as she only managed 8th, but Holzberg was very smooth on his second run which netted him 3rd. Domenicalli made sure one K8ley made it in, while yet another quality performance from Matthews saw him take 5th while his teammate only managed 7th. Garica slotted in between - well ahead of Stokey. At the back, Shabbab's title challenge took another huge blow when he failed to qualify, as did his teammate, while yet another DNQ for Bruner didn't help to thaw the rumours of his split from Thunderhead. Q2Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was Porsche and (one) Mitsubishi that were towards the top but a notable absentee was Maserati - Yoshida slid around and stumbled to 15th, while Cesar was shockingly knocked out in Q2 in the dying moments of the session. Lada continued their consistent inconsistency as Hudson was only 16th, Ostberg dead last. Renault joined the underperformer catagory with 22nd and 23rd, Einarsson and Davies dejected afterwards. Arrow - particularly van Snelheid - were disappointed as Zhao's 25th wasn't unexpected but 17th for van Snelheid was a major low point given his steller performances before. Jaguar's miserable qualifying form continued with Taylor peaking at 13th while Hutchinson was barely 21st. Zvironas also underperformed, only 18th, ahead of Holzberg and Garcia. Back at the front, McLaughlin set the early pace ahead of Vocquelin and Bergkvist initially, before a stunning lap from Thunder gave her 3rd. While Nakumaya couldn't match his teammates pace, he was much more impressive than before with 14th. Other front running team Downton were solid if unspectacular, 6th and 7th seeing both cars through. Highwind also got both cars through, Ellington 5th and Klien 9th, while Domenicalli was back to his impressive quali form, sneaking into 8th and another Q3 appearance. Fellow Q1 runner Ledesma did well to take 12th, but was overshadowed when A-Gos pipped Cesar to 10th at the end of the session to put Lamborghini into Q3 for the first time ever. Q3Opening the session was Thunder - she didn't match her exceptional pace in the previous session, but an average a shade over 91 mph was pretty solid. Ellington couldn't match that which rose Fusion's hopes, but Zozulya went quickest, about .25 mph up.
McLaughlin, one of the favourites for pole, was next and he looked impervious, well ahead of Zozulya and throwing down a strong gauntlet. Domenicalli was looking solid, but some small errors in the second half of his run meant he wounded up slowest. Vocquelin and Bergkvist were lined up next out of the pitlane, the Frenchman going out first. He did his best and his 4 lap run was certainly good - until his speed ended up 1 mph off McLaughlin. The pressure was on Bergkvist to deny the New Zealander - and he flourished, smashing in the fastest average of the day to storm to the top. Klien slid into 5th between Zozulya and Thunder, before Agostino went out next. He put his car on a knife's edge, planted his foot to the ground and kept it on the track to fling his car into 3rd, a fantastic effort. Maxwell was last to go, a mistake costing him dear as he could only salvage 9th.
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