Brazilian Stock Cars: Marcos Gomes flies again and takes pole

Curitiba hosts the sixth round of Brazilian Stock Car Championship and Marcos Gomes have arisen for the second time this season to score pole position. The Voxx Racing driver made a 1min18s238 on the 3.695-km track, 0s157 faster than Thiago Camilo, who starts second, and 0s250 ahead of Allam Khodair, third.

I knew my lap wasn’t good enough for pole position. I hoped for a top-5, but a top-10 isn’t that bad.

Laurens Vanthoor

"We’ve managed to improve the car even more and today we ended up on pole position. It is, in fact, a good job of the whole team and I have to thank everybody. Tomorrow is another day: it is raceday, it’s different, and I think we are in good shape" said Gomes. "We knew it was going to be hard, because the other drivers were fast as well, but we’d trusted the good pace we’ve shown during this season and I would like to dedicate this pole to my dad", told the son of the four-time Stock Car champion Paulo Gomes.

Qualifying session is divided in eight groups of four cars each, following the championship standings reversed order. As a non-scorer, Laurens Vanthoor was in group one, and the Belgian did a good job by maintaining the best laptime of the session until the sixth group hit the track. Vanthoor replaces the suspended championship leader and five-time champion Cacá Bueno at Red Bull Racing and only managed two flying laps before he went off and spun at turn three. He finished the session in eight position.

"I knew my lap wasn’t good enough for pole position. I hoped for a top-5, but a top-10 isn’t that bad. I think we can still improve over night, especially on my driving and a little bit on the set up of the car, to be even better for tomorrow’s races. I tried to push more, but I went too much, like Daniel as well", he said.

Two races on Sunday make it for the sixth round, exactly the half of the season, and race one starts at 1:10 pm (Brazilian Timezone) for a 35-lap battle, and race 2 starts at 2:20 pm to 20 laps.

Vicar