Thed Björk says he put in the best sector of his life in the second qualifying session for the FIA World Touring Car Cup (WTCR) at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, where he took pole position by just over a second.
Björk scored his second pole in as many days when he smashed the TCR lap record around the Nordschleife, posting a time of 8 minutes 55.085 seconds to break the record set by Peter Terting in qualifying for the 24 Hour race on Thursday.
“It took more effort than yesterday to get that,” admitted Björk. “There are so many things happening on these three laps but in the last try Yann [Ehrlacher] sneaked up behind me and I was thinking ‘what can I do?’
“Then my engineer said ‘good sector one, good sector two’ but I was in the middle of sector three and I had some oversteer and I made some small mistakes. But he said, ‘you’ve only lost two-tenths, so just go for it’.
“I put the hammer down as much as I could and sector four will probably the best in my life that I have done. I was very, very happy with that one.”
Hyundai cars have now taken six pole positions out of six WTCR qualifying sessions, although Björk admits he will have to get off to a better start in Saturday’s final race in order to not lose out at the first corner as he did in Thursday’s first race.
“Starting P10 for [the reverse grid] race two is the best way to start because you’ve taken the points from qualifying, you are P10, you can see what happens.
“If you are sixth or seventh, it’s the worst place to be. If something happens it happens but I can relax. I have the speed and I do my best – it feels good.
“I need a bit of a better start [in race three] and to get the points from that. But there is so much emotion going through your head in these laps, how to handle the speed so I’m really happy with this pole.”