Norbert Michelisz described his Friday in Sepang as a ‘perfect day’ after the Hungarian extended his FIA World Touring Car Cup championship advantage by six points by taking pole position in both qualifying sessions.
Michelisz dominated Friday’s running in Malaysia, as the rest of the field seemed to have no answer to the pace of his Hyundai.
The BRC Racing driver first secured pole position for race one by beating Aurélien Panis to the top time, a result made even sweeter by the fact that none of his title rivals made it into the top five points-scoring places.
He then followed up by topping all three segments of the qualifying session for races two and three, eventually beating title rival Esteban Guerrieri by almost eight tenths in the all-important Q3 session.
Michelisz now holds a 15-point lead at the top of the table heading into Sunday’s three races.
“It was a perfect day – I mean in the end, we felt that we needed to improve the car after the free practice sessions,” said Michelisz.
“[After FP1] the feeling inside was just not, not very good to be honest. We did small things on the set-up and it gave me a lot of confidence.
“Because of this I think the key moment was to build the confidence because on this circuit, it’s so easy to do a mistake.
“So, I managed to do, especially in Q2 and Q3, two very good laps without any mistakes and the same goes for the second run in the first qualifying and for sure this was the key for my two pole positions today.
“Of course, a huge thanks to the team; it’s incredible [the] support I receive from Hungary on social media so thanks to all the fans.
“But I don’t want to get too excited because, yeah, today was perfect, but there are still 75 points on the table, so you cannot take anything for granted.
“Of course, I’ll be a little bit happy today but from tomorrow morning I will focus 100 per cent on the three races on Sunday.”