Eurasia Motorsport’s Roberto Merhi edged out the best effort of Thunderhead Carlin’s Harry Tincknell to put the Philippines’ team’s #36 Ligier JS P217 Gibson on pole for tomorrow’s 4 Hours of Shanghai, the opening round of the 2019/20 Asian Le Mans Series.
Ahead of what will be his first race start of 2019 the ex-Manor F1 and LMP2 driver managed a lap in 1:52.191 to set the first pole position in the revamped LMP2 class, this the first season of the post 2017 Gibson V8 engined cars. Tincknell came close but fell agonisingly short of the pole, his best effort just 0.051 seconds off pole in the #45 Thunderhead Carlin Dallara.
Roman Rusinov could have leapfrogged both in the #26 G-Drive by Algarve Aurus 01, four-tenths up on the first sector he had his lap spoiled by traffic in sector two and would miss out on a front row start. The Russian will start third on the grid alongside Inter Europol Endurance’s Mathias Beche, the #34 looking racy, but not putting together an ultimately competitive lap in the balance between pace and tyre preservation.
Fifth on the grid was the debuting K2 Uchino ORECA, Shaun Thong’s 1:53.580 making it a tight-knit top five, the quintet separated by less than half a second.
In a first-ever competitive track session that saw the current and previous generation LMP2 cars on track together, ARC Bratislava’s Kang Ling set pole for LMP2 Am with a 1:56.893 after RLR MSPort’s Arjun Maini was pinged for track limits and lost several lap times that would have been good enough for class pole.
The pair of Rick Ware Racing cars arrived at the circuit during the session but are being prepped to start the race tomorrow.
LMP3 saw Garett Grist in the #3 Nielsen Racing Norma take a first-ever Asian Le Mans Series pole for the marque, snatching the advantage on his last flying lap from Inter Europol Competition’s Nigel Moore, Grist’s 2:00.112 four-tenths up on Moore with the sister Nielsen car of Colin Noble another car forced into conservative mode, a second off in third after losing provisional pole time again to track limits.
The #27 HubAuto Corse Ferrari 488 GT3 with factory Ferrari GT driver Davide Rigon took a closely fought pole position from WEC AF Corse team-mate Alessandro Pier Guidi in the #51 Spirit of Race Ferrari, Rigon’s 2:03.760 a quarter of a second clear of Pier Guidi.
Pier Guidi edged out an effort from Aston Martin Factory man Ross Gunn that had put the #77 D’Station Vantage GT3 on top earlier in the session, the gap from second to third on the grid a thousandth of a second.
GT race debutant and current Ferrari F1 simulator pilot Antonio Fuoco made it a closely separated top four in class in the #7 Car Guy Ferrari.
The four-hour race gets underway at 09:45 a.m. local time with a full live streaming service available on the Series YouTube channel and Facebook page.
Image courtesy of Eurasia
