Nielsen Racing and DKR Engineering swept LMP2 and LMP3 Qualifying for the weekend’s pair of four hour races at Dubai Autodrome on the first weekend of the Asian Le Mans Series.
Ben Hanley comfortably topped the first 10 minute session for LMP2 to set the grid for Saturday’s race with a lap in 1:45.248 as David Droux, making his LMP2 debut here with Graff Racing, pushed hard to pressure the Nielsen racing driver. A gap of eight tenths was a very good start ahead of the High Class racing Oreca of Dennis Anderson and the ARC Bratislava Ligier of Neale Muston.
Laurents Hörr meanwhile was in dominant form in the #2 DKR Engineering Duqueine in the first LMP3 session, the reigning ELMS class Champion banging in a 1:50.807 to gap the field by 1.2 seconds, helped to some degree at least from the elimination from qualifying of Colin Noble in the #8 Nielsen Racing Ligier after the car stopped briefly on track, a faulty throttle sensor requiring a quick reset but the session red-flagged before he could get underway again, the #8 out as it had brought out the red flag.
Instead the #26 G-Drive Racing Ligier would be the chief (but distant) challenger, Xavier Lloveras transitioning well from GT4 ahead of another LMP3 debutant , Guilherme Moura De Oliveira in the #13 Inter Europol Ligier.
In contrast GT3, very literally, could not have been closer with Ben Barnicoat storming to a provisional pole position in the #7 inception Racing McLaren that initially looked untouchable.
Barnicoat improved to a 1:55.217 but several other runners had strong finishes to the session with Axcil Jeffries almost pippin the McLaren, just 16 thousandths off in the #57 Kessel Racing Ferrari before Vincent Abril matched Barnicoat’s pole time to the thousandth in the final moments of the session, the inception driver claiming pole as he had set the time earlier in the session.
Mikhael Grenier would claim fourth, the newly named Mercedes AMG ‘Performance’ driver just over a tenth of a second back in the #20 sps Automotive Performance AMG GT3 Evo.
The grid for Sundays race followed a similar patter for the LMP classes with Hanley (1:46.075 ) and Hörr claiming a second pole apiece, though both with reduced gaps from their principal tormentors.
Colin Noble though would grab third in LMP3 in the #8 Nielsen Ligier ahead of the #13 Inter Europol car.
The GT3 field would dole out another thriller with two different cars producing a final result almost as close as the dead heat in session 1.
This time Jonny Adam in the #95 TF Sport Aston Martin would take the pole, a 1:55.883 edging out the #74 Kessel Racing Ferrari of Mikkel Jensen by just three thousandths of a second.
Ben Barnicoat was five hundredths back in the inception McLaren with Vincent Abril completing the second row in GT3.
Both Dubai races will run mainly in darkness with race one this evening at 16:30 local time (12:30 pm GMT).
