Jenson Brickley is set to start from pole position for the second race of the weekend at Misano on his Kumho FIA TCR World Tour debut, after a difficult session in which he failed to set a representative time but benefitted from problems for rivals Esteban Guerrieri and Julien Briché.
With Guerrieri unable to set a lap time due to driveshaft issue and then with Briché excluded after failing the ride height checks, Brickley has been promoted to tenth in qualifying, which also nets him a potential pole position for Race 2.
“I’m not so happy with my qualifying. Q1 went OK, as I improved a lot on my lap time from yesterday. I’m still learning the Honda and it’s good to have Ruben Volt here who has so much more experience with it, so I can learn from what he’s doing. Unfortunately, I got track limits on my first lap in Q2, which was a shame. I think we made the wrong decision to move our front tyres to the rear after Q1, and they were gone after the first lap. A lot of stuff going wrong made it a bad qualifying.”
Brickley is likely to be on pole for the reversed grid, but the only threat is if Gabriele Covini, who up until Briché’s exclusion was set to start from P1, sets the fastest lap in Race 1 to earn himself one more position up the grid.
“From 11th, my aim was to get into the top eight, but now I want to go for the top six,” he said. “I know I have a bit more pace than a couple of the guys in front of me, so I should be able to get up a few positions at least.”
Picture: WSC/Fastclick
