Thursday saw the first 3 rounds of qualifying, as well as a round of practice that was missed on Wednesday. Rain overnight meant the drivers were met with a damp track in the morning. This meant low grip for the first round of practice, however the track dried with racing and heat during the day. The wet dirt had dried into little balls, which means if a driver went off the racing line it was very hard to get back on! This caught many drivers out, in particular around the table top area where the off-line loose dirt was over a centimetre deep.

Yannick Aigoin managed to top qualify the first round quite convincingly by achieving the only 10 lap result at this stage. As you would expect on a damp track, some of the results of this first round came as a surprise. Both Daniel Vega and Raul Peris qualified above of Crono driver Davide Tortorici, who had been Yannick's biggest challenger through practice. Raul Peris, one of the few top Euro drivers running a Novarossi was showing excellent clean driving, with his place well deserved at this stage.

By the second round of qualifying the track was dry and high grip. This saw some amazing results with the top 4 racers, Yannick Aigoin, Renaud Savoya, Davide Tortorici & Robert Batlle, all getting 10 laps. Yannick had an edge, but the time between the others was just a matter of a few seconds. Both Tortorici and Batlle seemed very quick and it was clear they would up their pace for the next round.

If Yannick could push a similar time again it would effectively give him the event top qualifying spot. Round 3 soon came around and Yannick was going very well. However nearing the end of the 5 minutes a small mistake was made. This must have disturbed the rhythm as another mistake followed soon after. This lead to Battle setting the fastest time of the round.

Overall after Thursdays racing the current standing are:

As can be seen by the points, it is very close at the top. Therefore with two qualifying rounds left tomorrow, the struggle for event TQ is far from over. It's close, it's fast and exciting. Who will TQ the event? Keep an eye out on neobuggy for the latest results and check out Friday's report for all the action.