Vernay takes pole for Zandvoort’s Race 3

Jean-Karl Vernay of Leopard Lukoil Racing will live an afternoon on the opposite ends of the starting grids for today’s Race 2 and Race 3 at Zandvoort. The Frenchman signed an authoritative pole for Race 3, beating Rob Huff by over half a second, but will start from last in Race 2, following an engine change on his Audi RS3 LMS.
James Thompson and Aurélien Comte will fill the first row on the top-ten reverse grid for Race 2. 
Q1 saw Vernay posting the best time of 1:44.491 quite early in the session, after Benjamin Lessennes had taken a provisional lead. The Frenchman beat the Volkswagen Golf GTI of Rob Huff by 0.018 seconds and the other Audi of Frédéric Vervisch by 0.046 seconds. Yann Ehrlacher’s Honda Civic was fourth fastest ahead of Gordon Shedden’s Audi and Pepe Oriola’s Cupra. Mehdi Bennani, John Filippi, Aurélien Panis, Thompson and Comte rounded off the top-twelve who advanced to Q2.
Vervisch dominated Q2. The Flemish driver of Comtoyou Racing placed his Audi in P1 with a time of 1:44.205, ahead of Huff, Vernay, Shedden, and Guerrieri who were all promoted to Q3. Thompson and Comte secured P10 and P9 respectively and will start from the front row in Race 2.  
Q3 lost one of its stars, as Esteban Guerrieri could not take part because the front right suspension of his Honda Civic had collapsed at the end of Q2. Vernay clocked an excellent lap time of 1:43.994 that Rob Huff was not able to beat, qualifying second with a gap of 0.459 second. Shedden ranked third and Vervisch fourth as he stopped during his timed lap because of a broken uniball.
Race 2 will start at 12:15.