Driving for his ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport team, the German is splitting his time between his one-off ETCC appearance and his participation in rounds one and two of the FIA World Touring Car Championship, which is headlining Circuit Paul Ricard.

He went to the top of the Super 2000 times on his last lap, setting a qualifying best of 1m36.066s to beat SEAT driver and ETCC title contender Petr Fulín by 0.197 seconds. “The quick lap was a lap like all the laps before but the most constant without traffic,” said Münnich. “All the laps before there was somebody in my line, I was getting crazy in the car because always my lap was destroyed by somebody. This lap was just a free lap, not the best lap maybe but it was good enough for the pole.”

While Münnich had prior experience of his Honda, Fulín’s first run in his TCN2-specification SEAT came during testing on Friday morning. “It was very difficult because we have had both cars for three days, so it’s a learning experience with these cars and we wanted to improve our set-up yesterday and the weather conditions were changing,” said the Czech. “And we had used our litres of fuel so it was not possible to try for another lap. But I would like to congratulate René because he showed to everybody in the last lap the potential in these conditions.”

Behind Fulín, Norbert Nagy was a strong third for Zengő Motorsport with Fulín’s new Křenek Motorsport team-mate Christjohannes Schreiber impressing on his ETCC debut. Pierre Humbert, who is standing in for ETCC regular Andreas Pfister, was a flying fifth followed by Peter Rikli in his Rikli Motorsport Honda, ASK Lein Racing’s Mladen Lalušić and new Rikli recruit Kris Richard with the top eight covered by just over half a second. Igor Stefanovski and Fábio Mota completed the top 10.

In P12 overall, Niklas Mackschin claimed the Super 1600 class pole to begin his title defence in style in his GMA Autosport-run Fiesta. “I’m really happy to repeat the results of last year,” said the German. “It was really difficult to decide rain or dry. In the first laps it was really hard to drive but in the last laps it was dry and I pushed really hard for the pole and I’m really happy.” Kevin Hilgenhövel pipped Ulrike Krafft to second place in class but the 16-year-old will start of the back of the grid when it was found he failed to stop for a technical check during qualifying.

Sunday’s first race begins with a rolling start at 13h35 local time with the second 14-lapper beginning from a standing start at 14h50.