Felipe Fernández has secured his third consecutive pole position at Spa-Francorchamps, while it was a disastrous session for points leader Alex Ley, who crashed out at Raidillon on his first lap and it’s uncertain whether his car can be repaired for this weekend’s races.

Fernández has only ever claimed pole position at Spa and nowhere else, and the Spanish driver confirmed that he is a true specialist at the circuit when he blitzed the lap time of provisional pole-sitter Mike Halder by over half a second to claim the Pole Position Award by TR Watches, set on his only flying run in the 10-minute Qualifying 2 session.

Halder had looked on target for pole after an impressive lap on his first run, but the ALM Motorsport driver had to settle for second. Last-minute improvements by the two Monlau Motorsport drivers Viktor Andersson and Marco Butti saw the two CUPRAs lock out the second row behind the two Hondas, with Andersson also securing the Youth Best pole position in doing so. Nicolas Taylor, who’d led the way in practice yesterday, was fifth and was the best of the Audis for PMA Motorsport.

An impressive performance by Monlau’s Adam Shepherd saw him qualify sixth on his Spa debut, ahead of the Honda of Ruben Volt and Junesung Park’s Hyundai.

PMA Motorsport’s Nicola Baldan was ninth fastest, just ahead of BRC Racing Team’s Gabriele Covini, who rescued some solace for the team by claiming the reversed grid pole position for tomorrow’s race.

It was a double pole celebration in a sense for the Fernández brothers, with Victor Fernández claiming pole position in the Diamond Best Trophy class, albeit with the 22nd best overall time.

The team have a long task ahead of them to repair Ley’s car. Ley lost control of the car coming out of Eau Rouge on his first flying lap and destroyed the left-hand side of his Hyundai Elantra N TCR. The team has less than four hours to repair the car for Race 1, and in which case it would start from 24th and last on the grid.