Frédéric Vervisch was surprised to qualify his Audi RS3 LMS on the front row for the final FIA World Touring Car Cup (WTCR) race of the weekend on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, calling it ‘a gift’.
Vervisch secured his best qualifying result of the season so far and with it also took home his first points of the year.
The Belgian was a second behind pole-sitter Thed Björk around the 25.4 kilometre circuit and admits that he did not expect to be mixing it with the Hyundais at the front of the field.
“I’m extremely pleased, it’s really a gift,” said Vervisch. “We’ve had such a hard season. We thought we would be more competitive here but it’s still not easy and we had the guys like Thed and [Norbert] Michelisz who also know the track really well.
“But I’m extremely happy and hopefully now we can get some points. That’s the aim now and we don’t have zero points any more.”
Vervisch, who suffered a broken radiator in Thursday’s first race, described his lap as being on the very limit, admitting that he came close to crashing the car in his quest to improve on the 15th place grid position he had secured in Thursday’s qualifying session.
“I was really on the edge on that lap; a couple of times [I was close to] having an immense crash but I had to do it. This was our track, the four pushed as hard as we did.
“We made some changes in the session which helped every time and I am really happy with the work.
“Thanks to Comtoyou and Audi and everybody for this amazing result.”