Garrett Lowe and Thomas Toffel played their cards correctly and claimed the final Pole Awards of 2026 in a tricky Qualifying session at Circuit Zolder.
Overnight rain at the end of Friday’s running of the 2026 NASCAR Euro Series Finals led to one of the more unpredictable Qualifying sessions in recent memory.
Drivers and teams discovered on Saturday morning that the track was in the middle of its transition period. It was dry enough for slicks to be usable, but it was still damp enough for wet weathered tires to potentially be faster.
With no knowledge on which tires were faster, the competitors were left scrambling to work out which strategy was the ideal one.
In the end, it was those who gambled on slicks that won out. Garrett Lowe worked together with his BS+BREMOTION team to clinch the American’s second V8GP pole position award, while Thomas Toffel learned from his mistakes in the V8GP qualifying to win the Pole Award in OPEN.
EuroNASCAR V8GP Qualifying Recap
BS+BREMOTION opted for Garrett Lowe to go out in V8GP’s Q1 session on the slicks. Initially, the decision almost backfired on the American as Lowe only barely made it through in 15th position.
After the session, Lowe wanted to switch out to the wet tires, but the team vetoed Lowe’s decision.
Fortunately for Lowe, Bremotion’s decision paid off immensely. Track conditions became more favorable to the slick runners starting from V8GP Q2 and with Lowe’s tires already heated up, the 24-year old charged his way to pole position with a Superpole time of 1:43.993.
“Q1 was miserable, that was rough!” admitted Lowe after Qualifying. “Some of the guys that were on top in Q1 were on wets and the track went on a phase where you could go on either wets or slicks.”
“We got lucky as we barely made it through to Q2. I was making the call to go back to the rain tires after Q1, but my engineer told me ‘No, we’re not doing it!’.”
Lowe’s countryman and Junior Trophy rival Vinnie Meskelis would have secured his first front row start, but his No. 76 BS+Competition Toyota failed the ride height inspection.
Meskelis was not the only one to fail the Qualifying inspection. Teammate Sebastiaan Bleekemolen – third in Qualifying – also got penalized for having a car that was 35 mm’s too wide, while Gianmarco Ercoli – fourth in Qualifying – was penalized after inspectors discovered non-spec body parts in his No. 11 Alumitec Ford.
That left Paul Jouffreau, fourth in Qualifying, to start on the front row. Despite his penalty, Sebastiaan retained third position while Marc Goossens was promoted to fourth. It was the Belgian’s best Qualifying result since the 2024 Finals, where he qualified third.
The Alumitec’s were classified fifth and sixth with Nelson Piquet Jr. starting ahead of the penalized Ercoli. Meskelis dropped to seventh with Vladimiros Tziortzis, Giovanni Cartechini – on his maiden Superpole appearance – and Jack Davidson completing the top-10.
Jordan O’Brien was only 11th ahead of Pim van Riet and Davit Kajaia. Pim Van Riet, a long-time touring car racer and a good friend of the Bleekemolen’s, joined Team Bleekemolen in the Finals to race the normally-vacated V8GP seat in the No. 72 Wissol squad.
The biggest surprise of Qualifying was the Q 2 eliminations for Thomas Krasonis and his teammate, the championship leader Vittorio Ghirelli.
Their elimination was the result of PK Carsport opting for the wrong strategy. They were one of the teams opting for wets in Q1, leaving them unable to heat up their slicks for Q2.
V8GP Q1 Results | V8GP Q2 Results | V8GP Superpole Results
EuroNASCAR OPEN Qualifying Recap
Thomas Toffel was one of the V8GP drivers that got eliminated early for gambling with the slicks. His elimination might have been a blessing in disguise, however, as he can observe how rapidly the track had evolved.
By the time he had to return to the track for EuroNASCAR OPEN’s Qualifying, Toffel knew that he had to get his tires heated as much as possible. He admitted that he played “really risky” in Q1 and after narrowly advancing to Superpole, the Race Art Technology driver put in a lap of 1:37.707 to get the first blood in the decider weekend.
“I played it really risky in Q1, but also I think sometimes it’s an advantage to drive in the two categories because of the experience,” said Toffel after receiving the Stromwatches.com Pole Award.
“It was wet in the V8GP Q1, so it was difficult to warm it up again and understand where the grip was in the Q1 of OPEN.”
Toffel’s main rival Raphael Lessard qualified on the front row, but the above-mentioned penalty for the No. 11 team also affected the Canadian. That left Lessard down in fourth behind Jens Beeusaert – who took his best starting position to date – and Gil Linster.
Vladimiros Tziortzis, Thomas Dombrowski, Martin Doubek trailed behind in fifth, sixth and seventh respectively. Eighth went to Fabrizio Armetta, who competed in an one-off OPEN outing with the No. 55 Club Competition Toyota.
Sandro Tavartkiladze and Claudio Remigio Cappelli completed the top-10. Beitske Visser had qualified 11th initially, but the No. 76 team’s penalty relegated her down to 16th in the final results.
Maximilian Seth stepped up from EuroNASCAR Rookie Challenge to make his competitive debut in the OPEN division at the Finals.
Racing the JetWise-backed No. 20 Lux Motorsport FJ, Seth qualified in 22nd position. The German was 16 seconds slower than the leaders in Q1, but he did qualify ahead of André Lortie, who was 19 seconds off the pace.
OPEN Qualifying Results | OPEN Superpole Results
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