» WTCR: Back-to-back poles for Björk

Thed Björk has claimed a clean sweep of qualifying honours at this weekend’s FIA World Touring Car Cup round at Ningbo International Speedpark after winning pole position for Sunday’s final race.

The Swede, who won the weekend’s opening race from pole position on Saturday, came out on top in another closely-fought qualifying session around the twisty and undulating four-kilometre circuit. He and his fellow Hyundai runners once again proved to be the class of the 25-car field, with three of the grid’s four i30 N TCR entries making it through to the final Q3 shootout for pole position.

The YMR and BRC Racing Team entries dominated the opening phase of qualifying and were only denied a 1-2-3-4 result at the top of the timesheets by Esteban Guerrieri in the Münnich Motorsport Honda. The Argentine would feature as a threat throughout the session, going fastest of all in Q2. He was unable to repeat the dose in the final one-lap shootout and qualified third-fastest behind Björk – claiming his sixth pole position of the season – and BRC’s Norbert Michelisz.

The first segment of Saturday’s three-part qualifying session produced few major surprises, although championship frontrunner Jean-Karl Vernay’s troubles this weekend continued when he narrowly missed the top-twelve cut. The Team WRT driver was pipped to a Q2 berth by just 0.08 seconds by fellow Audi runner Frédéric Vervisch and will start both of Sunday’s races from thirteenth on the grid.

The 10-minute Q2 session allowed time for just two one-lap runs per driver and with Guerrieri emerging quickest of all he would be joined by Björk, Michelisz, championship leader Gabriele Tarquini and the Sébastien Loeb Racing VW Golf of Rob Huff.

First out on track in Q3, Huff set a solid benchmark time but he was soon demoted by Björk who clocked an ultimately unbeatable effort of 1:50.371 on his one flying lap. Tarquini made a small mistake in the second sector but still beat Huff on the stopwatch, but the Italian ace was still edged by Michelisz and Guerrieri who followed him out on track.

Fourth-fastest overall, Tarquini picked up a further two championship points to extend his advantage over Björk’s teammate Yvan Muller – who qualified ninth-fastest, which is a front-row start on the reversed-grid Race 2 – to eleven points.

With the fastest ten qualifiers’ grid order reversed for Race 2 – which begins at 14:20 local time – pole position will be held by Mehdi Bennani in the second SLR Golf GTI.

2018 FIA World Touring Car Cup Race of China Ningbo – Races 2 & 3 Final Qualifying Results
	Q3 Qualifiers	Team	Time	Gap
1.	Thed Björk	MRacing – YMR	1:50.371
2.	Norbert Michelisz	BRC Racing Team	1:50.474	+ 0.103
3.	Esteban Guerrieri	ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport	1:50.517	+ 0.146
4.	Gabriele Tarquini	BRC Racing Team	1:50.622	+ 0.251
5.	Rob Huff	Sébastien Loeb Racing	1:50.902	+ 0.531
	Q2 Qualifiers	Team	Time	Gap*
6.	Denis Dupont	Comtoyou Racing	1:50.591	+ 0.441
7.	Frédéric Vervisch	Audi Sport Team Comtoyou	1:50.602	+ 0.452
8.	Yann Ehrlacher	ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport	1:50.729	+ 0.579
9.	Yvan Muller	MRacing – YMR	1:50.732	+ 0.582
10.	Mehdi Bennani	Sébastien Loeb Racing	1:50.913	+ 0.763
11.	Nathanaël Berthon	Comtoyou Racing	1:51.070	+ 0.920
12.	Ma Qing Hua	Boutsen Ginion Racing	1:51.464	+ 1.314
	Q1 Qualifiers	Team	Time	Gap**
13.	Jean-Karl Vernay	Audi Sport Leopard Lukoil Team	1:51.145	+ 0.739
14.	Aurélien Comte	DG Sport Compétition	1:51.169	+ 0.763
15.	Pepe Oriola	Team OSCARO by Campos Racing	1:51.190	+ 0.784
16.	Aurélien Panis	Comtoyou Racing	1:51.205	+ 0.799
17.	Zsolt Dávid Szabó	Zengõ Motorsport	1:51.226	+ 0.820
18.	Timo Scheider	ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport	1:51.484	+ 1.078
19.	Kevin Ceccon	Mulsanne SRL	1:51.759	+ 1.353
20.	Norbert Nagy	Zengõ Motorsport	1:51.774	+ 1.368
21.	John Filippi	Team OSCARO by Campos Racing	1:51.871	+ 1.465
22.	Gordon Shedden	Audi Sport Leopard Lukoil Team	1:51.946	+ 1.540
23.	Mat’o Homola	DG Sport Compétition	1:52.023	+ 1.617
24.	Tom Coronel	Boutsen Ginion Racing	1:52.183	+ 1.777
25.	Fabrizio Giovanardi	Mulsanne SRL	1:52.201	+ 1.795

* Denotes gap to the fastest Q2 qualifying time of 1:50.150 posted by Esteban Guerrieri
** Denotes gap to the fastest Q1 qualifying time of 1:50.406 posted by Yvan Muller

Post-Qualifying Penalties: