Rob Huff to start Race 1 from pole position

A foggy start to the day greeted the crowds who’d arrived at the circuit to watch the first session of the day, but the sun quickly began to burn through the fog.
The Volkswagen Golf GTI of Rob Huff was the early pacesetter with a lap time of 1:45.170, before Yann Ehrlacher became the first driver to break the 1:50 barrier when the Honda driver set a time of 1:44.792. After around eight minutes of the session, the Audi RS3 LMS of Jean-Karl Vernay went four-hundredths of a second faster (1:44.752) but the session was then halted when Dávid Zsolt Szabó’s Cupra went off at Turn 8 and the red flags came out.
Following a five-minute delay while Szabo’s car was recovered, the session resumed. First Huff (1:44.141) and then Ehrlacher (1:44.303) went quicker than Vernay who improved his best lap with a 1:44.395. Gordon Shedden in the other Leopard Lukoil Audi was fourth (1:44.556) with Ehrlacher’s teammate Esteban Guerrieri fifth in the second of the All-Inkl.com Münnich Motorsport Honda cars (1:44.599).
With a little over eight minutes remaining, Ehrlacher once again went fastest (1:44.058). Nathanaël Berthon (1:44.488) went fourth quickest in the Comtoyou Racing Audi, but Huff then retook provisional pole position with a lap time of 1:43.945 and fellow British driver Gordon Shedden then set the third quickest time (1:44.102) to edge Berthon down to fifth and Guerrieri to sixth.
To the delight of the Dutch fans, Tom Coronel then went sixth fastest (1:44.596) before being eclipsed within moments by Aurélien Comte (1:44.531). Benjamin Lessennes (1:44.340) then beat both to go fifth just as the chequered flag fell to end the session, with Frédéric Vervisch then grabbing ninth place with a time of 1:44.597.
Huff will therefore start Race 1 from pole position, with Ehrlacher alongside him on the grid. Shedden and Vernay will form an all-Leopard Lukoil second row, with Lessennes and Berthon on Row 3. Comte, Coronel, Vervisch and Guerrieri completed the top ten, while the top 16 cars were covered by just over a second.
The first race will start at 16:20 this afternoon.