Richard, who had never previously topped an ETCC qualifying session in his debut season in the series, surged to the top of the times with a blistering lap of 1m50.067s, only to crash into the tyre barriers at the Nürburgring chicane at approximately 140kph. While the 21-year-old was unharmed, his Rikli Motorsport-run Honda suffered extensive damage to its left side and will now require major repair ahead of tomorrow’s races shown live on Eurosport.

And although there were more than 10 minutes of the session remaining when action resumed, none of the Swiss driver’s rivals could better his performance with Petr Fulín, currently locked in a close battle with Richard for the ETCC Super 2000 Cup title, missing out by 0.105s as ambient temperatures topped 28 degrees centigrade.

“On one side I am happy but on another side I am not so happy and I am really sorry to my guys because they have a lot of work to do now,” said Richard. “I wanted to push a little bit more but at the Nürburgring chicane I lost my back, hit sideways the tyre wall and both windows of the doors are broken and both doors are completely broken. I hope the guys can fix it and I hope they find the spare parts we need because we have not much here. We still have a gearbox problem so it’s going to be very difficult in the races but I hope for a good day tomorrow.”

Fulín, who now trails Richard by three points in the title battle after Richard scored three qualifying points compared to the two claimed by the Czech, said: “We had some problems with the first set of new tyres. I had completely without rear handling in the first corner and I lose a lot of time there. It was not possible to do two fast laps in my car, only one. Then we had the red flag when I was on a good lap but I knew it was not possible to do a fastest lap time today.”

Behind fellow SEAT driver Fulín, Frenchman Pierre-Etienne Chaumat marked his impressive ETCC debut with third place. Hungary’s Norbert Nagy, who was on pole at the previous round in Portugal, took fourth with Swiss Christjohannes Schreiber fifth and Fábio Mota (Portugal) sixth. Peter Rikli (Switzerland) was seventh as Mladen Lalušić (Serbia) rounded out the top eight.

In the ETCC Super 1600 Cup, 16-year-old Czech Tomáš Korený claimed his maiden class pole, despite concerns about his Ford Fiesta’s gearbox. He edged out 17-year-old German Kevin Hilgenhövel (Peugeot 207) by 0.162s with title leader Niklas Mackschin (Germany) a further 0.018s adrift in a close battle. Andreas Rinke – second to Mackshin in the title chase – was fourth ahead of fellow German Daniel Niermann and Ksenia Niks from Ukraine.

“I am very happy about the result,” said Korený. “I still had a few problems with the gearshift even though the guys fixed it as much as possible until the qualifying and I hope they will fix it a little bit more for the race because I still wasn’t happy with second gear. I was lucky with the red flag because it waved out as I was coming into the pits for the new tyres for the fast lap. I made a small mistake on my fastest lap but it was still enough to beat everyone else. It was a bit of a surprise for me because I expected second or third because of the mistake. It’s my first season in ETCC, I used to drive the open-wheelers and it’s completely different for me. I am still getting used to it but it looks like I am getting faster and I am happy about it.”

Race 1 begins from a rolling start at 10h50 local time on Sunday with Race 2 from a standing start at 12h35 with the top eight finishers from Race 1 lining up in reverse order. Both races are scheduled for 12 laps and will be broadcast live on Eurosport 2.