Ulysse De Pauw has not missed his return to the VW Fun Cup powered by Hankook at Zandvoort. On the #2 DRM Autographe the driver from Walloon Brabant recorded the best lap time in the first minutes of the qualifying session, with a chrono of 1'58.994, less than four hundredths of the lap record.
"This pole position is for Matthieu de Robiano, the team owner of DRM Motorsport, who is still in hospital in Italy," explained the Hankook Qualifying Trophy winner. "Zandvoort is a circuit that suits me well. The car was perfect and I would like to thank the whole DRM team for their work. We are going to try to confirm with a win tomorrow. It would be the best way to encourage Matthieu in his recovery."
The qualifying session saw 42 cars on the track. Two of them, the #278 Acome Racing by AP and the #485 du Why Not? Racing, were unfortunately involved in a serious collision. It looks like the #278 will participate on Sunday, but with a different chassis.
Behind the #2 DRM Autographe that Ulysse De Pauw shares with Stéphane Lémeret and Brent Verheyen, we found the other favourites, with first the two sister cars, the #477 DRM Autographe (Cédric Bollen-Sébastien Kluyskens-Émile De Dryver) and the #199 DRM Credeco (Quentin Denis-Florian Van Dooren-Julien Schein), fastest in the Fun and Pure classes. The top 5 of the session was completed by the #480 Milo Tourneur of the championship leaders (Simon Tourneur-Guillaume Mondron-Gilles Verleyen) and the #465 Compact Machinery by Leader (Tristan Földesi-Antoine Morlet-Benoit Dupont-Édouard Chevalier).
Just before the majority of the competitors were about to enjoy a nice barbecue in the Zandvoort sunshine, the qualifying game - a duel on a... kicker table - would review only some of the results. After all, the fastest team from the qualifying session will also start on pole position on Sunday. The #2 DRM Autographe will be joined by the #199 DRM Credeco, while the #480 Milo Tourneur and the #280 Socardenne Milo of Lorenzo Donniacuo and Kevin Caprasse will be on the second row of the grid, joined by Benoit Philips after Timo Van Impe's absence with a back injury.
In the Biplaces, the fastest time was set by the #365 Car-Pass LRE by DRM (Stéphane Lémeret-Miguel Coppieters-Philippe Reynens-Philippe Denis-Gautier Engisch), but it was the #342 Milo Monster Trendy (Francis Plunus-Éric Jardon-François Plunus) who took pole position after a strong performance on the kicker table.
The start of the eight-hour race will be at 10am on Sunday morning. After the #480 Milo Tourneur (Simon Tourneur-Guillaume Mondron-Gilles Verleyen) at Mettet, will we get a new winner at Zandvoort?
