The GTE Pro Pole battle ended as a duel between the two AF Corse Ferraris with Toni Vilander’s early effort matched by Davide Rigon.
The recent form of the #71 crew though, they lead the #51 in the Championship standings, was underlined again as James Calado outqualified Gianmaria Bruni, the reigning World Champion unable to better his time on a last lap effort leafing an overjoyed Calado, already out of the car in the AF Corse garage, to whoop with delight – joy unconfined for AF Corse’s young duo, a 1:38.295 average enough to see off the #51 by just over a tenth!
Behind the Ferrari pair came the #99 Aston Martin, Fernando Rees doing a great job once again, backed up this time out by Alex Macdowall, the young Brit posting lap times more than sufficient to fend off the Porsche challenge behind.
In GTE AM it was a popular first pole position for the #50 Larbre Competition Corvette, Gianluca Roda and Paulo Ruberti combining well to see off the #72 SMP Ferrari challenge with the only sub 1:40 average, 1:39.901.
The #98 Aston Martin came through late in the session to take third slot from the #83 Ferrari with Pat Long unable to claw back enough to get into the mix in the #77 Porsche.
Stop-Press: Larbre’s pole time has been disallowed after the #50 Corvette was found to have a fuel cell irregularity (relating to the fuel cell ventilation valve) They will start from the back of the grid. That promotes the #72 SMP Racing Ferrari to class pole position.
On further investigation the part found to be outside the regulations is a valve designed to prevent fuel flowing back if the car becomes inverted. The part fitted is a standard fit to all three existing C7.Rs and has been on the #50 car all season. It differs in two principal ways to the alternative. Firstly one part operated a return block under gravity, the other (the FIA Approved part) is spring loaded. The Corvette standard fit part is not FIA stamped.
GG
