Another pole for Björk, but Vervisch is close behind

Thed Björk repeated himself and conquered another pole in a sunny afternoon at the Nordschleife. The Swede imposed his M Racing YMR Hyundai in a thrilling second Qualifying session in which lap times dropped dramatically.
“The car was really good, I was pushing all the time more and it was always responding”, he commented. Comtoyou Racing’s Frédéric Vervisch was second-fastest, for the delight of the Audi fans, ahead of the other Hyundai cars of Norbert Michelisz and yesterday’s Race 1 winner Yvan Muller.
The first attempt saw Björk fastest and going immediately under the 9-minute mark (8:59.550), preceding Muller, Michelisz, Gordon Shedden, René Rast, Benjamin Lessennes, John Filippi and Rob Huff. The second attempt saw both Björk (8:57.977) and Muller (8:58.824) improving significantly their times, but shortly after, Huff (8:58.646) and Vervisch (8:58.742) sneaked in between the two, while Yann Ehrlacher came below the 9-minute mark too (8:59.476), taking provisional fifth. Few minutes from the end of the session, Michelisz took the lead, with an exceptional mark: 8:56.987.
But it wasn’t over yet: in an exciting end of the session, Björk claimed the pole by improving further to 8:55.085, with Vervisch second (8:56.125), followed by Michelisz (8:56.534), Muller (8:56.739) and Ehrlacher (8:56.749). Lessennes, Huff, Esteban Guerrieri, Rast and Pepe Oriola rounded off the top ten. The Spaniard will start from pole in Race 2 with the reversed grid, and was quite happy with his performance: “For a first time at the Nordschleife, it is not bad to be so close to real specialists. The track, I must say, is really something, and quite scary at times!”
Jean-Karl Vernay missed the top-ten by three tenths and will start 11^th in both Races 2 and 3; after crashing in yesterday’s Race 1, point leader Gabriele Tarquini qualified only 14^th.
Race 2, the 8^th of the 2018 WTCR, will start tomorrow at 11:00 over the distance of 3 laps.