Filipe Albuquerque continued his fast start to the weekend at Spa in Qualifying this afternoon. The Portuguese driver put United Autosports’ Michelin-shod #22 ORECA 07 Gibson on pole position by seven-tenths of a second with a 2:00.848.
This came after he topped both practice sessions ahead of qualifying, making it five pole sitters in five race weekends this season.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been on pole and with this machine, United has been unstoppable on pace,” the pole man said. “We needed to get the job done in Qualifying, I did two laps, the set up was great. We were not so lucky in Silverstone but we were learning about the car, I believe we will have no issues tomorrow.”
Second on the grid was the #23 Panis Barthez Competition ORECA of Will Stevens, the Briton coming closest to Albuquerque with a 2:01.587, putting Dunlop on the front row. Alex Brundle in United’s sister ORECA looked to take second off Stevens, but his best time was deleted shortly after he crossed the line at the end of the session; he will start seventh.
Third on the grid tomorrow will be the #30 Duqueine Engineering ORECA, ahead of the Cool Racing 07 and points-leading G-Drive Racing Aurus that slotted in fifth.
As expected, after their big incidents in FP2 the #28 IDEC Sport and #31 Algarve Pro ORECAs didn’t make it out or set times. It remains to be seen whether either of them will be able to take the start tomorrow.
In LMP3, Realteam Racing took Pole, after David Droux set a 2:12.239 in the Swiss outfit’s Norma.
The class was dominated by the M30, with the top four all Normas. Behind Realteam, M Racing and Ultimate’s examples took second and third, 0.617 and 0.640 off the pole time respectively.
The best of the Ligiers was fifth, Mikkel Jensen setting a 2:13.357 to come within a tenth of Colin Noble who put Nielsen Racing’s #7 Norma on the second row of the grid in fourth.
Matteo Cairoli and the #77 Dempsey Proton Porsche will start tomorrow’s ELMS race at Spa from pole in GTE, though he briefly had his fastest lap deleted after the session. The Italian’s best time was a 2:15.088, but that was taken away just after the final flurry of times, dropping him to third, but just as the Proton crew in the garage had stopped celebrating and spotted the change, it was reinstated.
“It’s great, every time I come here I feel free,” Cairoli said after scoring his third pole of the season. “It’s my favourite track and I have to thank the team for the job they’ve done on the track. I can’t wait for tomorrow. I was under pressure because Alessandro Pier Guidi pushed me, I made mistakes but I put a lap together and we did it.”
This means that Luzich Racing, the leader in the title race will start from second after Alessandro Pier Guidi’s late flying lap of 2:15.571. The #60 Kessel Racing Ferrari, which was promoted to second momentarily will start third, ahead of the #55 Spirit of Race Ferrari that missed out on a top three grid slot by a tenth after Matt Griffin’s efforts.
The 4 Hours of Spa is set to begin tomorrow at 12:30 local time.
