EuroNASCAR PRO Qualifying Recap – Loris Hezemans Starts Title Defense with Pole Position at Vallelunga

After Tobias Dauenhauer secured pole position in the EuroNASCAR 2 Qualifying yesterday, Loris Hezemans makes it a Hendriks Motorsport Qualifying sweep this weekend as the defending champion starts off his title defense with a pole position for the first PRO class race at Vallelunga with Alon Day and Jacques Villeneuve completing the Top 3 in Qualifying.

Loris Hezemans starts off his title defense this year in the best way possible as the Hendriks Motorsport driver secured Pole Position in the EuroNASCAR PRO Qualifying at Vallelunga earlier today with a time of 1:40.491.

Hezemans snatched the provisional pole late in the Qualifying session after main championship rival Alon Day led the majority of Qualifying before Hezemans scored his fastest Qualifying lap late in the session to secure the pole position in Race 1 and make it a double pole position for Hendriks Motorsport this weekend.

Day eventually qualified 2^nd with a time of 1:40.579 ahead of Jacques Villeneuve and Daniel Rowbottom, the highest performing rookie. JV and Rowbottom were the only other two drivers to set a Qualifying lap time under the 1:41’s after they set a lap time of 1:40.596 and 1:40.958 respectively.

Gianmarco Ercoli completes the Top 5 in his first Qualifying session for CAAL Racing in the PRO class ahead of last year’s championship runner-up Stienes Longin. Lucas Lasserre qualifies seventh as Nicolò Rocca, Thomas Ferrando, and Francesco Sini completes the Top 10.

Patrick Lemarié qualifies 11^th as the fastest Challenger Trophy driver as the Frenchman qualifies just 0.003 seconds ahead of Luigi Ferrara in his first Qualifying session since 2003. Both Giorgio Maggi and Marc Goossens had a disappointing Qualifying as they only qualified 13^th and 14^th respectively, while Dario Caso completes the Top 15.

Mauro Trione is 16^th ahead of Stefano Attianese, who was entered as a late entry to drive Alex Caffi Motorsport’s No. 1 Remedica Ford this weekend. Bernardo Manfrè is 18^th ahead of Justin Kunz, who finally brought the No. 99 DF1 Racing Camaro on-track during race week after Marcel Lenerz failed to set a lap time in Qualifying and both races for the EuroNASCAR 2 class yesterday.

Evgeny Sokolovsky, who had to switch his car entry to the No. 48 as the damage suffered by MSM’s No. 46 Camaro in Dernovsek’s crash yesterday proved to be too severe for the team to be able to fix overnight, qualified in 20^th ahead of Fabio Spatafora, who rather embarrassingly was nearly 11 seconds off the pace of the leaders.

A big story of the Qualifying was Lasse Sørensen’s failure to set a lap time during the Qualifying. Having only came out during the final minutes of Qualifying, the defending EN2 champion ultimately didn’t set a lap time, leaving the Dane to start his first race as a full-time EuroNASCAR PRO class driver in last place.

That being said, Sørensen has had experience with starting from last in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series. Twice in Brands Hatch last year he had to start from the very back of the grid – He famously won from 27^th and last on the grid in the Saturday Elite 2 Race before he climbed from 28^th (second from last) to 10^th in the Sunday Elite 1 Race that weekend.

QUALIFYING RESULTS

Disclaimer: Unless noted, all photos used in this article are courtesy of NASCAR Whelen Euro Series / Stephane Azemard.