Tarquini leads a Hyundai quartet in Qualifying

The Hyundai drivers dominated the second Qualifying session at Marrakech, filling the first two rows of the grid for this afternoon Race 3.
After setting the three fastest laps in yesterday’s first Qualifying, Gabriele Tarquini (1:24.316), Yvan Muller (1:24.396), Norbert Michelisz (1:24.540) and Thed Björk (1:24.653) qualified from first to fourth in Q3.
The best of the rest was Yann Ehrlacher who completed an outstanding session and ranked fifth in his Honda Civic, followed by Rob Huff and Mehdi Bennani in the Volkswagen Golf GTI cars. James Thompson (Honda), Jean-Karl Vernay (Audi) and Pepe Oriola (Cupra) rounded out the top ten, which means that the young Spaniard and Vernay will share the front row in the reverse grid for Race 2.
Race 2 will start at 4:45pm local time over the distance of 18 laps.

Q1 – Yvan Muller is fastest
Muller set the fastest lap of 1:24.734, beating his fellow Hyundai drivers Björk, Tarquini and Michelisz.
The Hyundai cars set the pace from the early stages, as Muller (1:25.491), Michelisz (1:24.863) and Björk (1:24.796) alternated on top of the timesheet before proceedings were disrupted by the red flag with 15 minutes to go, when Denis Dupont Audi went off and hit the tyre-wall at Turn 1.
Muller was able to improve further when action resumed, while Huff and Vernay ranked in fifth and sixth behind the Hyundai quartet.
It was a close call to stay in top-twelve, as the first 18 cars were all covered by eight tenths of a second. Esteban Guerrieri and Tom Coronel were the first drivers who did not make the cut, 22 and 68 thousandths of a second behind Gordon Shedden respectively.

Q2 – Ehrlacher after four Hyundai cars
Ehrlacher was the only non-Hyundai driver to qualify for Q3; the young Frenchman posted the fifth fastest lap of 1:24.738 in his Münnich Motorsport Honda Civic FK7 TCR and ranked behind the quartet of the Hyundai i30 N TCR cars.
Björk was the fastest (1:24.392), followed by Tarquini (1:24.442), Michelisz (1:24.519) and Muller (1:24.658).
Again, gaps were small, with all the twelve cars covered by only eight tenths and Huff was excluded by five thousandths. Oriola qualified tenth and won pole position on the reverse grid of Race 2.

Q3 – Tarquini wins pole position
With an impressive effort in the third sector Tarquini won pole position for this afternoon’s Race 3. On his timed lap, the Italian was nearly two tenths slower than Muller after the second sector, but eventually he completed the lap in 1:24.316, beating his French competitor by seven hundredths of a second. Michelisz qualified third, with Björk fourth and Ehrlacher fifth.

Picture: WTCR/DPPI