Vittorio Ghirelli and Thomas Toffel shattered the official Circuit Zolder lap records with their epic Qualifying performance for the 2025 EuroNASCAR Finals.
Circuit Zolder’s track record was beaten once again during Qualifying for the 2025 NASCAR Euro Series Finals. Vittorio Ghirelli and Thomas Toffel thundered through their respective sessions to beat the official records set in Friday’s Free Practice.
Ghirelli’s Superpole time of 1:36.454 was four tenths faster than the official Qualifying record set by Stienes Longin in 2021. It’s also three tenths faster than the 1:36.784 unofficial benchmark that the Italian had set in Practice yesterday.
For Toffel, he absolutely crushed Paul Jouffreau’s existing EuroNASCAR OPEN Qualifying lap record. Jouffreau’s previous record of 1:38.078 was lowered by more than a second, thanks to Toffel’s very fast lap time of 1:37.041.
Both drivers now set their sights to win the upcoming races. Each driver has their own goals to achieve in Belgium: As the leading driver in EuroNASCAR PRO, Ghirelli wants to secure back-to-back titles with the No. 24 infitto.eu Camaro.
Toffel, who’s very much out of the EuroNASCAR OPEN title contention, is aiming to close his season on a high after a difficult season onboard the No. 34 Toffel Immobiliere Camaro.
EuroNASCAR PRO Qualifying Recap
Vittorio Ghirelli set the benchmark even higher in EuroNASCAR PRO after his dominant Practice performance. His opponents are faced with the fact that Ghirelli’s pace is beyond what anyone else was able to do so far.
This is perfectly demonstrated by Ghirelli’s gap to fellow front row starter Paul Jouffreau. Both drivers were separated by 0.793 seconds, which is very high for EuroNASCAR standards.
How high is the bar, you may ask? The 0.793 seconds gap that separated Ghirelli and Jouffreau was bigger than the gap between Jouffreau in second to Gianmarco Ercoli in eighth!
Despite this, Ghirelli remains level headed. The reigning champion is aware that the battle is won on the races, not qualifying, and is looking forward to seeing how the races will proceed.
“The first half of the battle is done, but now it’s the long war ahead and I’m ready for it,” said Ghirelli after Qualifying. “We did a 36.7 yesterday and 36.4 today. I stayed focused and managed two very good laps.”
“I think the others were a little off at the moment, but the #24 PK Carsport Chevrolet Camaro drove like a GT3 car! There was so much grip, and I was able to drive it very well.”
Slotting behind Jouffreau are his Junior Trophy rivals Bruno Mulders and Garrett Lowe. Thomas Toffel and Thomas Krasonis filled the third row ahead of Liam Hezemans and Gianmarco Ercoli.
Toffel also continued his Challenger Trophy dominance with this top-5 Qualifying performance. His closest rival Davit Kajaia was only 13th fastest.
Fabrizio Armetta and Julien Rehberg completed the top-10 positions. Rehberg was the only driver from Group 1 to advance to Superpole, but he was nearly joined by his group rivals.
Marc Goossens and Sebastiaan Bleekemolen both came close to advancing to Superpole from Group 1. Unfortunately, they missed out on the shootout by less than a tenth of a second.
Goossens still led the returning drivers with his 11th place Qualifying effort. The next best is Ryan Vargas, who qualified 16th in the No. 48 Anyone.com Camaro.
EuroNASCAR PRO Qualifying Results | EuroNASCAR PRO Superpole Results
EuroNASCAR OPEN Qualifying Recap
2025 has been a turbulent year for Thomas Toffel. Starting his year with Yvan Muller’s M Racing, Toffel had to make a late return to Race Art Technology after M Racing parted ways with him during the mid-season break.
The Swiss has also been under criticism from his fellow drivers for the amount of incidents that he had been involved in the past two years.
However, if everything went his way, Toffel has the potential to compete even against the series’ best drivers.
This potential is what was shown during EuroNASCAR OPEN’s Qualifying session. Toffel mastered the session’s late shootout to take the first Qualifying Pole Award in his career. Qualifying was brought upon to a late stoppage when Claudio Remigio Cappelli spun his car at the Kleine chicane.
“I knew the track was cooler this morning, so there was more time to warm the tires,” said Toffel, who secured his second career pole position in EuroNASCAR OPEN.
“I think we have had a good pace since the beginning of the weekend and we found a little thing in the morning that helped me. I’m not in the battle for the championship, so the plan is to win the races. We need a little bit of luck and we’ll see what happens!”
By coincidence, Krasonis again joined Toffel on the starting grid. Krasonis did not maintain his top spot from Free Practice, but front row still represents a great result for the Greek.
Master Trophy’s battle rages on after Bruno Mulders and Thomas Dombrowski qualified on the second row of the grid.
Sandro Tavartkiladze, the third main protagonist in the overall Master Trophy battle, qualified in sixth. The Georgian was just 0.023 seconds shy of a top-5, which was secured by reigning champion Martin Doubek.
Gil Linster, Patrick Schober, Melvin de Groot and Andres Beers completed the top-10 results. De Groot took advantage of Cappelli’s spin to beat the Italian in the Legend Trophy classifications.
Valentino Gambarotto was not able to capitalize on his top-5 Practice pace. The Italian rookie only qualified 13th as the slowest driver in Group 2.
Davide Frulio was the best of the returning drivers once again. The Italian is 14th, narrowly beating Nick Strickler who will start right behind the CAAL Racing driver.
Reza Sardeha did not improve from his 19th place result. Debutant Francesco Leogrande also continued his woes, remaining at rock bottom at the end of Qualifying.
Leogrande will be joined by Sven van Laere in the last row of the grid. Sven, rather disappointingly, failed to turn a lap in Qualifying due to mechanical issues in the No. 64 HTFX Ford Mustang.
EuroNASCAR OPEN Qualifying Results
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