Squadra Martino’s Matías Milla and Juan Ángel Rosso claimed pole position for the TCR South America endurance race at Buenos Aires, edging out Esteban Guerrieri and José Manuel Sapag by a mere 0.008 seconds.
The qualifying session took part in two phases. First, there was 15 minutes for the series’ regulars, including those in contention for the overall title, to post their times.
Then a further 15 minute session followed for the endurance partners to post their fastest lap times.
Milla and Rosso emerged as the fastest duo in the combined lap times ranking, their effort of 2 minutes 43.347 seconds being a mere eight thousandths of a second faster than their Squadra Martino team-mates, with Milla’s lap time being the ultimate fastest of the day at 1:21.513.
Néstor Girolami, who ended up in third together with team-mate Raphael Reis, posted the second fastest with his effort of 1:21.662.
Fourth on the grid for Saturday’s race will be Cobra Racing’s Rodrigo Baptista and Tom Coronel, whose combined effort was 1.2 seconds off the pace.
Championship leader Pepe Oriola, together with endurance partner Martin Ryba, will start from fifth, the duo being just two hundredths of a second slower than title rival Baptista and Coronel. Oriola had been third quickest in his session with a 1:21.924, but Ryba was just ninth in his part with a lap of 1:22.676.
The Scuderia CJ Hyundai Elantras are running with an all-new driver line-up in both cars this weekend, since their last appearance in the series at Rivera in Uruguay three events ago.
Damián Fineschi, son of Oscar, was sixth in the leading Hyundai together with Pedro Aizza, whilst Nicolás Palau and Eugenio Provens were seventh.
The best PMO Motorsport Lynk & Co was that of Fabricio Pezzini and Ernesto Bessone in eighth, with their team-mates Leandro and Claudio Rama directly behind in ninth.
The top ten was completed by the Squadra Martino Honda Civic FK2 of Facundo Marques and Fabio Casagrande.
One car, the second PropCar Alfa Romeo of Gonzalo Fernandez and Javier Manta, only completed a time in one of the sessions, after Manta stopped just two minutes into the first session with a technical issue leaving Fernandez unable to tke to the track in the second part.
The race is scheduled to get underway at 16:00 local time on Saturday (19:00 GMT, 20:00 CET).