Yann Ehrlacher claimed his second pole position of the 2026 Kumho FIA TCR World Tour at the Chengdu Tianfu International Circuit, but the Geely driver had to go out again to stop championship leader Mikel Azcona from making it five poles in a row.
Santiago Urrutia topped the Q1 part in his Geely Preface, while the guest drivers and TCR Asia front runners squabbled to make it into the Q2 group, with Team TRC’s Euan Chan Ho Ting pipping Marcus Cheong Man Hei’s MacPro Racing Honda at the last moment.
In Q2, Ehrlacher set the first benchmark with a time of 1:24.508, but the Frenchman was soon surprised by the pace of Azcona, who, despite 40kg of compensation weight after his pair of victories in South Korea, went four-thousandths of a second faster.
Ehrlacher improved on his final run to retake pole by just under seven-hundredths of a second, while Azcona secured the outside of the front row and also useful points for his championship bid. Urrutia qualified a strong third, while Azcona’s teammate Norbert Michelisz was fourth.
Ma Qing Hua was fifth quickest for his home race, ahead of the two SP Compétition CUPRA cars of Aurélien Comte and Jean-Karl Vernay who both struggled for pace on their new tyres.
Thed Björk went out for a lone run to put his Geely Preface in a strategic eighth, which puts him provisionally third on the grid for Race 2, where the top ten are reversed.
Lo Sze Ho was the fastest of the Guest Star Trophy drivers in ninth, while Diego Moran was the best of TCR Asia in tenth; with the reversed grid the Ecuadorian has also secured the provisional pole for Race 2.
The first race is scheduled for 15:15 local time (09:15 CEST).
Qualifying
1:24.437 – Yann Ehrlacher (Geely Cyan Racing, Geely Preface)
1:24.504 – Mikel Azcona (BRC Hyundai N Squadra Corse, Hyundai Elantra N EV)
1:24.779 – Santiago Urrutia (Geely Cyan Racing, Geely Preface)
Championship points
- M. Azcona, 319 pts.; 2. N. Michelisz, 274; 3. S. Urrutia, 268
Picture: WSC/Paddocker
