Blancpain Endurance Series, Magny-Cours - Qualifying Report

Vita4One will start from pole position in today’s Blancpain Endurance Series at Magny-Cours. Michael Bartels put the nr 29 Vita4One Ferrari 458 Italia on the front row in the final part of Qualifying this afternoon.

After rain in Free Practice and Pre Qualifying the sun was out for Qualifying and the track was dry. As the tires weren’t ready in time for Qualifying the session started one hour later, allowing the teams to swap to the new slicks and make changes to the set-ups of the cars.

Qualifying 1 ended with the McLaren MP4-12C GT3 of Adam Christodoulou on provisional pole position. The nr 60 McLaren GT driver posted a 1:40.282, which was two tenths of a second quicker than the fastest time set by the nr 1 Vita4One Ferrari and half a second quicker than the nr 10 SOFREV ASP Ferrari.

Unfortunately for the both the McLaren GT car and the SOFREV ASP Ferrari their first qualifying run turned out to be the best one, as both cars did not put in times in the second and third session. Klaas Hummel parked his car out on the circuit, whilst the SOFREV ASP Ferrari hit mechanical problems.

In the second session it was AF Corse’s Matt Griffin who set the fastest time. Griffin was the first to get into the 1:39s and also the only driver to manage that in Qualifying 2, resulting in provisional pole position. Frank Kechele ended the session in second position, three tenths of a second behind Griffin. Third quickest was WRT - Belgian Audi Club’s Marcel Fässler. Raffaele Giammaria tried to get into the top three as well, but after jumping the curbs at the end of the lap several times he instead handed over a slightly out-of-shape Porsche to his teammate Paolo Ruberti.

More sunshine and increasing grip levels resulted in even faster lap times in Qualifying 3. A lot of drivers improved the fastest lap time of their car and in the end no fewer than eight teams inside the top ten were there after improving their fastest time. Michael Bartels ended up setting the fastest time, a 1:39.219, beating Stéphane Ortelli by .031 seconds. Despite his rib injury and a non-aligned steering wheel Ruberti managed to get the AutOrlando Porsche into third place.

Qualifying 3 was briefly interrupted by a red flag when the nr 22 Sport Garage Ferrari went off into the gravel trap and had to be pulled out. The AutOrlando escaped a similar fate and as Ruberti managed to get around the stranded Ferrari, but the nr 9 Porsche collected a lot of gravel as well.

New kid in town, the JRM Nissan GT-R GT3, will start from eighteenth position. Richard Westbrook set a 1:41.899, which meant the car was 1.5 seconds slower in dry conditions, after having been 3 seconds behind the pace setters in the wet.

Sergio Negroni secured pole position in the Cup class, De Lorenzi Racing the only car entered there. Gregory Guilvert in the nr 31 Ruffier Racing Lamborghini was the quickest driver in the Gentlemen Trophy category, with Fredy Barth taking the GT4 pole position in the final moments of the third qualifying session.

The three-hour race will start at 6.15 pm tonight. As a result the cars will start in daylight and will finish in darkness.