Craft-Bamboo Racing’s Sergey Afanasyev admits he was surprised to have taken his first-ever pole position in the season opener of the TCR International Series in Bahrain.
Afanasyev, who is in his second season in the TCR Series, beat B3 Racing’s Dušan Borković in Saturday’s qualifying session, although he did not know it at the time.
“It’s a very strange feeling, because I wasn’t even aware of the result, as the radio was working on and off,” explained the Russian driver. “I had good pace but was certainly not under the impression that it could mean pole position!
“It’s great for the team, for LUKOIL and for me, and it means we worked well. It was difficult to make any prediction, because we had little time for practice yesterday and most of us do not know the track. Real practice started today with qualifying and, of course, I am very happy.”
Borković had earlier been the pace setter in the Q1 session, and admitted that he was still taking time to get accustomed to the car, track and tyres.
“It’s a good result, of course, especially taking into consideration that I still don’t know the car too well, the track is new and mostly, I have to acquainted to the tyres,” explained the Serb. “I was fastest in Q1, but couldn’t repeat that in Q2.
“I made a couple of mistakes and then the tyres wore down. Still, it is a very good result for a first qualifying. I’ll try to keep cool in the races and get as many points as possible, it’s only the start of a very long championship…”
The first round of the TCR International Series takes place at 19:30 local time (17:30 BST; 18:30 CEST) on Saturday.