Milovan Vesnić grabs pole in TCR Eastern Europe at Grobnik

Milovan Vesnić has claimed his second pole position of the year in the TCR Eastern Europe series at Grobnik circuit in Croatia. The Serbian set the fastest time in his Audi RS 3 LMS by just under a tenth of a second ahead of the CUPRA of Carol Wittke in a hard-fought session.
During the first ten minutes, the top spot changed hands four times, before Bartosz Groszek seemed to be settled with a provisional pole with a time of 1:30.185 in his Audi. The two Fullin Race Academy CUPRA Leon Competición cars of Petr Čížek and Wittke were second and third at the half-way point of the 25-minute session, before the field set out for its second run.
No one could beat Groszek’s time, with Vesnić moving up to second place, just two-tenths of a second behind, before Michal Makeš got to within 0.096 seconds in his CUPRA – and then Łukasz Stolarczyk moved up to second behind his fellow Pole, just 0.002 seconds behind in his Audi.
With just over five minutes to go on one final run, Wittke showed there was now much more pace in the track, as he stormed to pole with a time of 1:29.847, quickly improving on his second lap to a 1:29.493, nearly six-tenths clear of Groszek’s previous benchmark.
2019 champion Vesnić then set his pole-grabbing lap of 1:29.409, while Groszek went out to respond, and while he was the last driver to also break into the 1:29s, he could do nothing about the pace of Vesnić and Wittke and would qualify half a second behind in third.
Current points leader Makeš eventually qualified in sixth, and will start one place behind his title rival Tomáš Pekař’s CUPRA.
The first race is scheduled to take place at 14:45 CEST today, with live streaming on www.tcr-series.tv.

Grobnik - Qualifying
1:29.409 Milovan Vesnić (ASK Vesnić Racing, Audi RS 3 LMS)
1:29.493 Carol Wittke (Fullinrace Academy, CUPRA Leon Competición)
1:29.922 Bartosz Griszek (Horňák-Aditis, Audi RS 3 LMS)
1:30.132 Łukasz Stolarczyk (BTC Maszyny, Audi RS 3 LMS)
1:30.267 Tomáš Pekař (Carpek Service, CUPRA)

Championship points
1. M. Makeš 123 pts; 2. T. Pekař 114; 3. S. Steibel 75 

Picture: TCR Eastern Europe/Petr Frýba