John Filippi will start Race 1 at Monza from pole position after setting the fastest time in this morning’s two-stage Qualifying session at the ‘Temple of Speed’. Alongside the Sébastien Loeb Racing – Bardahl Team CUPRA on the front row of the grid will be the Target Competition Hyundai Elantra N of Nicola Baldan while Jáchym Galáš and Michelle Halder will line up on Row 2. Tomorrow’s reversed-grid Race 2 will then see Klim Gavrilov start from pole after the Volcano Motorsport CUPRA ended Qualifying in tenth place.

Ahead of the first stage of Qualifying, the session was declared wet with rain forecast throughout the day. The first competitive lap times were set by Felice Jelmini (2:05.215), Josh Files (2:05.585), Pepe Oriola (2:04.628), Jáchym Galáš (2:04.445) and Marco Butti, who went fastest on his first flying lap with a time of 2:04.360. On the next lap, the three Target Competition cars of Files, Jelmini and Nicola Baldan all improved but the Halder Motorsport Honda Civic Type R of Jack Young went P1 with a lap of 2:01.860. Butti also improved with a 2:02.054, but was P2 behind Young. Franco Girolami then went P1 with a 2:01.400 before Jelmini improved again to go P2 (2:01.849) but Butti then went fastest again with a 2:00.752 and Felipe Fernández went P3 (2:01.703).

Going into the second half of the twenty-minute session, Baldan improved again to go second fastest (2:01.040) and Files went P5 (2:01.575). Butti then improved with a 2:00.542, John Filippi went P2 (2:00.695) and Girolami improved with a 2:00.754. Files also improved (2:00.956) to move up to P4 while Rubén Fernández (2:01.149) was P6 behind Baldan.

With less than three minutes remaining, Klim Gavrilov went fastest with a lap of 1:59.834 and Galáš went P2 (2:00.521) before the session was red-flagged after Jack Young’s car was stranded at Turn 1 with what appeared to be damaged steering.

The twelve drivers who went through to Q2 were Gavrilov, Galáš, Butti, Filippi, Girolami, Files, Felipe Fernández, Baldan, Rubén Fernández, Michelle Halder, Sergio López and Michele Imberti.

The first competitive laps of Q2 were set by Imberti (2:05.295), Filippi (2:05.694) and Baldan (2:05.747). Filippi then improved on his next lap to go fastest with a time of 2:03.731 and Baldan improved to go P2 with a 2:04.721. Galáš was P3 (2:04.781) ahead of Michelle Halder (2:05.034) and Butti (2:05.074).

With a little over a minute of the ten-minute session remaining, a stream of cars crossed the finish line to start their last laps. Two minutes later when they took the chequered flag at the end of the session, nobody had managed to improve on their earlier times and so it would be Filippi who would claim pole position for Race 1 with Gavrilov on pole for Race 2. Drivers’ championship leader Girolami qualified seventh, so will start from fourth on the grid in Race 2 but his closest challenger Files was the slowest of the twelve and so the 2019 TCR Europe Champion will start from the sixth row of the grid in both races. As a result of the Qualifying session, Girolami has edged a further point ahead of Files in the standings and so the Argentinian now only needs to out-score the British driver by 17 points to claim the Drivers’ title with the final event of the season in Barcelona still to go.

After the session, Young received a three-place grid penalty for Race 2 after an incident in Q1 involving Evgenii Leonov’s CUPRA. The punishment was a result of the suspended penalty he received at Spa-Francorchamps. He also received a further suspended three-place penalty for the remainder of the season.

Qualifying result

1.     John Filippi (Sebastien Loeb Racing – Bardahl Team, CUPRA Leon Competición)   2:03.731

2.     Nicola Baldan (Target Competition, Hyundai Elantra N) +0.990

3.     Jáchym Galáš (HYUNDAI | Janík Motorsport, Hyundai Elantra N)   +1.050

4.     Michelle Halder (Halder Motorsport, Honda Civic Type R)  +1.303

5.     Marco Butti (Comtoyou Racing, Audi RS 3 LMS)   +1.343

6.     Michele Imberti (Michele Imberti, Hyundai i30 N)   +1.564

Championship points

1. Girolami 307 pts; 2. Files 228 pts; 3. Coronel 214 pts; 4. Callejas 208 pts; 5. Gavrilov 201 pts.

Race 1 is scheduled to start at 13.40 CEST this afternoon and will be streamed live on TCR TV and the series’ social media platforms.

Race 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKM0SdIz-Yg