Just like in F1, stock cars debut on the night with Felipe Massa taking pole position

Felipe Massa took pole position at the inaugural Stock Car Night Race at the Autodromo Internacional de Cuiaba. A time of 1 minute 47.005 seconds in Q3 marked Massa’s first pole position in this category and his ninth pole position out of 10 stages held in 2025. The qualifying session was the first session on track and they improved with each session.

In Q1, Massa was fastest in the group with a lap time of 1 minute 48.398 seconds. Also moving forward are Gabriel Casagrande, Rafael Suzuki, JP Oliveira, Ricardo Mauricio, Felipe Fraga, Enzo Elias, Zezinho Mujati, Thiago Camilo and Julio Campos.

Those eliminated from Group 1 in the first phase were Ricardo Zonta, Attila Abreu, Bruno Baptista, Lucas Cole, Vicente Origi, and Rubens Barrichello, who also had a disappointing result in 2025.

The leader of Group 2 was Gaetano Di Mauro, who, like his teammate Felipe Fraga, surprised with a good performance despite having a heavier car than his opponents due to the “ballast of success”. Also advancing from Group 2 are Nelson Piquet Jr., Arthur Gama, Gianluca Petekov, Arthur Leist, Felipe Baptista, Lucas Foresti, Dennis Navarro, Caca Bueno and Alan Cordea, who will be taking to the circuit this Friday from TCR South America.

Rafael Suzuki said: “Everything is very new, but the track is very cool, there are no waves, it’s called carpet, there’s a lot of grip, the lighting looks like it’s daytime. I’m going to fight to be part of Cuiabá’s stock car history.” After the first stage of classification, the drivers were excited, especially because of the quality of the track.

Massa led the session again in Q2. The TMG driver advanced to the final stage of classification with a time of 1 minute 47.607 seconds. Massa was closely followed by Nelson Piquet Jr., who looked set to use the extra session with TCR South America to pose a threat. Advance to Q3: Felipe Massa, Nelson Pique Jr., Arthur Gama, Enzo Elias, Felipe Fraga, Rafael Suzuki, JP de Oliveira, Gaetano Di Mauro.

Arthur Leist, who was eliminated in Q2 but finished qualifying in 11th place, reported that he had problems adapting his car during the evening hours after afternoon training, saying, “The course changed a lot from afternoon training to evening.The car was good, but we had problems with speed and we were 16km/h slow, so we couldn’t fight for pole, but we did manage to get into Q3 in 8th place.”

In Q3, Felipe Massa finished a “sweep” in qualifying, giving no chance to his opponents, recording a lap time of 1 minute 47.005 seconds, more than half a second faster than Arthur Gama, who was second with a time of 1 minute 47.662 seconds. JP de Oliveira rounded out the top three with a time of 1 minute 47.741 seconds.

Complete classification results: