Monlau Motorsport’s Eric Gené claimed his first TR Watches Pole Position Award in the TCR Europe series at the Red Bull Ring, by just under a tenth of a second ahead of the Audi of Nicolas Taylor, with an all-junior top three with title contender Marco Butti behind them.

The Spanish driver managed to set a time of 1:36.605 in the second part of qualifying, after setting good pace throughout Q1, with Taylor proving to be his chief rival throughout the session. Gené managed to hold on to pole position, despite his final lap, which was a tenth of a second faster, being deleted due to a track limits violation at Turn 10.

It was also Taylor’s best qualifying of the season, with the reigning Italian series champion securing his best position on the grid in the PMA Motorsport Audi RS 3 LMS.

Butti will lead off a trio of Italians from third on the grid, with the experienced Nicola Baldan qualifying in fourth in his AIKOA Racing Audi, ahead of Butti’s MM Motorsport Honda.

René Kircher, making his ALM Motorsport debut was a strong qualifier, and one of the drivers with good experience of the circuit from his time in TCR Eastern Europe and TCR Germany, and qualified sixth, while there was trouble for his team-mate Ruben Volt, who stopped at Turn 2 in the first part of qualifying with a driveshaft issue.

Gené’s team-mate Jenson Brickley put his Monlau Motorsport CUPRA in seventh with late improvement, and will start ahead of Raphael Fournier, with the French driver impressing on his TCR Europe debut with the eighth quickest time.

Max Hart managed to set the ninth fastest time, despite losing two lap times during the session, which will pay off in Race 2 as he will share the front row of the reversed grid with Jimmy Clairet, with the Audi driver qualifying in tenth.

Clairet was fortunate to scrape through, after Junesung Park, who’d set great pace in practice yesterday, had his only lap time deleted due to a track limits violation and will start from 12th for both races.

The other key name to have a bad qualifying session was championship leader Teddy Clairet, who will start 16th in both races, despite only being six-tenths off of the pace in qualifying, as he struggled with the 30kg of ballast onboard his Audi.

Gené’s pole elevates him to second in the standings, just eight points behind Tedd going into this afternoon’s race.

Race 1 gets underway at 14:00 CEST later today, with live streaming at youtube.com/@tcrtv and on DAZN.