Elroy Wagner pulled off an excellent lap in qualifying today, and finds himself on pole position ahead of tomorrow's race. He'll line up alongside Powers in 2nd, with Ruiz and Kangur filling out 3rd and 4th respectively. Q1 The first Q1 session of the year was ruled by AMR and Arrow, with Schnyder just under two tenths clear of his teammate courtesy of a 1:16.630, who in turn was almost two tenths ahead of the two Arrows. Karl Beckenbauer was just over a tenth off of making the grid for Highwind, while Milkovich was in turn just over a tenth down on his teammate. Meanwhile, the Meteors had a session to forget as they found themselves 0.763 seconds off the pace with Davenport while Beyer was slowest at 1.027 seconds slower than the lead car in Q1. Full times below.
Q2 As soon as the lights went green, Powers was straight out onto the track, and immediately set a time good enough for provisional pole. However, to everyone's surprise, Ruiz and Kangur put themselves right up there with the Brit, and the three traded blows lap after lap in a scintillating battle, despite being far from eachother on the circuit. They were quickly joined by the two Franklins in this almighty scrap; however as the times tumbled, the likes of Klaas Van Snelheid and Felix Perez began to drop off, and traffic was becoming a big problem. The Franklins in the final ten minutes were extremely unlucky, repeatedly hitting traffic and having to abandon their laps, and a couple of mistakes on their limited clear runs put them in serious danger of being in the bottom half of the grid. Meanwhile Lucas and Ocelot were both performing well, each team vying to get two cars inside the top ten. Meanwhile in the battle for the wooden spoon, Barclay headed Vasquez and Hanson going into the dying minutes of the session; the Canadian making several errors and encountering traffic repeatedly. Back up front, as the chequered flag dropped, it was Van Snelheid who struck first, barely taking provisional pole, which was promptly snatched away from him by his teammate. Ruiz gave it his all but fell two thousandths short, while Kangur found himself a further two hundredths back from the Brazilian. Then with an almighty lap, Wagner blasted across the line with the fastest time to take the first pole position of the season; Perez had looked the only man to challenge him, but locked up into the final corner. Ocelot will have been pleased to get both cars in the top ten, sandwiching a lone Lucas of Marcus Thunder, while Halvosen still struggled with the car and barely made it into the top ten by two thousandths of a second. However, the big shock was both Franklins out of the top ten. They had simply not been able to find a clear run and stumbled across traffic, and find themselves starting 11th and 17th, with Forini besting his teammate after an impressive free practice yesterday. Simon had looked to struggle with his car, but encountered traffic as he had found his flow, and will be disappointed with 16th position behind a strong showing from Alvarez. Thunstrom, Hoskins, and Barclay were also caught up in traffic on their best runs, a common theme of today's qualifying session, and they too find themselves slightly out of position. Arrow and Ingram would have hoped for better, with only one Jaguar powered car starting inside the top twenty. Meanwhile Dominic Hanson, who was only informed at short notice he would be racing this weekend, will be happy not to have qualified last; however as the sole driver to take the hards, he may face a long afternoon tomorrow. See full classification below. With numerous cars out of position, and a fairly even split between the mediums, softs, and supersofts, we seem to have all the ingredients for a fantastic race tomorrow. We look forward to bringing you live coverage of the action, and hope to see you tuning in. Until then, thanks for reading, and we'll see you on the grid!
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