Ryan Eversely wins a crucial pole at Watkins Glen

RealTime Racing’s Ryan Eversley moved a further step close to the title of the Pirelli World Challenge’s TCR class by claiming pole position in today’s Qualifying session at Watkins Glen.
Not only, later today Eversley and his Honda Civic will start Race 1 of the series’ finale in front of the rest of the field, but the driver from Atlanta scored the point for the pole position that stretched his leading margin in the standings to eight points over his rival, Brian Herta Autosport’s Michael Lewis. Lewis qualified his Hyundai i30 N in third position, behind his teammate Mark Wilkins and ahead of Eversley’s colleague Mason Filippi.
Eversley posted the fastest time of 1:55.354 on his first flying lap; he improved to 1:55.311 on the following lap, but that time was disallowed for a track limit infringement. The only other driver who was able to go under the 1:56 mark was Wilkins (1:55.913), although his best attempt remained more than half-a-second slower that Eversley’s. By the end of the twenty-minute session, Lewis moved up to third with a lap of 1:56.024, demoting Filippi to fourth (1:56.312).
After topping the timesheet in both the morning Practice sessions, local driver JT Coupal couldn’t qualify better than fifth (1:57.445) in the Compass Racing Audi RS3 LMS; he was followed by the FCP Euro-HRD Volkswagen Golf GTI of Nate Vincent (1:57.867).
Race 1, the penultimate round of the series, will start today at 3:00pm local time (21:00 CET); live streaming at www.tcr-series.tv.