Brazilian V8 Stock Cars: Felipe Fraga flies in the end and takes pole position

With air temperatures that did not go higher than 15 degrees Celsius (19ºC on the track), Santa Cruz do Sul held a hot battle for pole position this Saturday afternoon on the eve of the fourth round. The fastest driver of the session was Cimed Racing’s 20-year-old ace Felipe Fraga, who took P1 from Allam Khodair’s hands by only 0s048 in the very end of the session. His laptime was 1min19s611.

Fraga’s first - and last - pole was in Brasília-2014, almost two years ago. Today’s achievement was his first with the Cimed team. A feat that takes a lot of weight out of his shoulders. "Our car is one of the top-3 on races, but were missing it on qualifying. It was horrible. Now we did it, a pole-position that I was waiting for a long time. My engineers found the perfect set up and here is the result. I feel like I took 50 kilos off my back. For tomorrow, I hope I can keep first position and disappear in the front", he told.

Although losing P1 by such a tiny margin, Khodair was ok with it. The Full Time-Texaco driver was part of the third group to hit the track and set a time of 1min19s659 - none of his competitors got close on the following groups. Only Fraga, the last one remaining on the circuit, could beat his laptime. "We know that the final groups are stronger. We missed it on the first sector, but Fraga did a great lap. Anyway, starting on the first row is not bad at all, and we will go to collect as many points as we can", said Khodair.

Red Bull duo Daniel Serra and Cacá Bueno got positions three and four, as Thiago Camilo starts on fifth position. Championship leader Marcos Gomes only got the seventh fastest lap of the day.

Brazilian V8 Stock Car races Sunday at 1:00 pm (45 minutes/34 laps) and 2:10 pm (30 minutes/22 laps 10-place-grid-reversed) local time.

Vicar