There’s a pleasant surprise leading the group of cars headed to the Hyperpole session: Dries Vanthoor and the #15 Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 led the pack in Wednesday evening’s Qualifying Practice at Le Mans!
Vanthoor and the #15 BMW he shares with Raffaele Marciello and Marco Wittmann are among the eight Hypercar teams headed to the battle for pole position tomorrow. They’ll be joined by the two Cadillac Racing V-Series.Rs run by Chip Ganassi Racing, the two Ferrari AF Corse 499Ps, the #35 Alpine Endurance Team A424, and the #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963.
“We did a lap in the beginning and then we waited,” explained Vanthoor. “For sure we were actually hoping for a red flag to then have a good position again after the red flag. But it did not come.
“The track improved, we knew that the others improved as well and the car was really good. So yes, I’m really happy, big thank you to the entire team. We know that it’s only a pole position for now, we still have the Hyperpole and we still have a 24-hour race, but everybody is working flat out.”
The #7 Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010 Hybrid should have gone through with them but will not. Kamui Kobayashi was safely through to Hyperpole already, but with three minutes left in Qualifying Practice, he was trying to improve – but clipped too much kerb at the exit of the Porsche Curves and spun off into the gravel, bringing out a red flag that ended the session.
Kobayashi was fourth-fastest with a 3:24.754, but had all of his lap times deleted for causing a red flag.
While the #7 Toyota is set to start at the very back of the Hypercar field on Saturday, the #12 Hertz Team JOTA Porsche will go to Hyperpole in its place.
There are no such worries for the rapid #15 BMW which advanced to Hyperpole with a 3:24.465 that Vanthoor set with less than ten minutes to go.
That knocked Le Mans’ own Sebastien Bourdais off the top spot, but he put the #3 Cadillac through with a 3:24.642. Last year’s polesitter Antonio Fuoco also made it through in the #50 Ferrari with a 3:24.731.
The top nine qualifiers in Hypercar surpassed last year’s best time in Qualifying Practice, a 3:25.213 from Fuoco – and positions one through 12 were covered by less than a second!
Paul-Loup Chatin was a surprising fourth in the #35 Alpine with a 3:24.872, followed by Alex Lynn in his repaired #2 Cadillac, defending race winner Alessandro Pier Guidi in the #51 Ferrari, and Kevin Estre, who hung onto seventh in the #6 Penske Porsche despite spinning off at Mulsanne Corner while trying to improve his time, just ahead of the #12 JOTA Porsche of Callum Ilott who will get a second chance tomorrow in Hyperpole
Nicolas Lapierre missed out in the #36 Alpine, and so too did Matt Campbell in the #5 Penske Porsche. And on the other side of the Toyota garage, it was frustration for Brendon Hartley in the #8, the man who went fastest in Free Practice 1 just a few short hours ago yet found himself out of Hyperpole.
Hartley went off at the first Mulsanne Chicane with 20 minutes left as he sat on the wrong side of the cut line. And just when he was on track to bump his way back in, his team-mate and team principal Kobayashi spun off in front of him, which prevented Hartley from improving at the end. Hartley finished 11th in Qualifying Practice.
The #63 Lamborghini SC63 of Mirko Bortolotti was the best of the two Iron Lynx cars down in 13th; Jean-Eric Vergne in the #93 Peugeot TotalEnergies 9X8 was the fastest for the French marque in 15th.
There were also encouraging signs from Isotta Fraschini as Jean-Karl Vernay broke the 3:30 barrier for the first time this week in the #11 Tipo 6 Competizione – not enough to get into Hyperpole, but enough to put distance between him and the LMP2 runners behind.
It was the #37 COOL Racing ORECA 07 with Malthe Jakobsen who set the top time in LMP2 – a blistering 3:32.827 – to top the field by three-tenths of a second. Jakobsen set his lap just after the halfway point of the session, eclipsing Louis Deletraz’s 3:33.134 in the AO by TF #14 car.
Ben Hanley then put the #23 United Autosport car in third, ahead of Mathias Beche in the #65 Panis Racing car, and the #28 of IDEC Sport thanks to Job Van Uitert.
Those five cars were best at halfway, while it was a frantic rush to get into the tail end of the eight and into Hyperpole late in the session. AF Corse, Inter Europol Competition, Vector Sport, United Autosport and DKR Engineering were all in the mix late on in the session, all with lap times in the high 3:34s.
Patrick Pilet was the first to secure a spot for the #10 Vector Sport team, with a 3:34.252 to go sixth. Oliver Jarvis then jumped into second on what would have been his last flying lap in the #22 United Autosport car, with a 3:34.480. He was almost immediately eclipsed by Laurens Hörr in the #33 DKR Engineering car, with a 3:34.262, putting Jarvis and United Autosport on the bubble.
Luckily for Jarvis, the red flag prevented the likes of Varrone in the #183 AF Corse, the #34 Inter Europol car of Clement Novalak, and last year’s LMP2 winner, Fabio Scherer in the #24 Nielsen Racing car, who was on an improving lap when the red flag came out. All three missed the cut – as well as the #30 Duqueine Team car of James Allen, who was one of the early pace-setters this afternoon.
The gap between making the cut for Hyperpole and missing out was only 0.287 of a second. Remarkably, all eight cars that progressed to Hyperpole bettered the best time from last year’s Qualifying Practice.
There was an even split of LMP2 and LMP2 Pro-Am cars progressing to Hyperpole, with the #14 TF by AO, #23 United Autosports, #4 Panis Racing and #33 DKR Engineering cars making the Hyperpole cut-off. It is important to note that there is no regulation stating that the Bronze-rated driver must compete in Hyperpole in an LMP2 Pro-Am car.
Proton Competition took the top spot for Ford in LMGT3, Ben Barker showed his typically rapid form over a single lap early in the session. The British driver’s fourth lap in the blue #77 Ford Mustang LMGT3 delivered a 3:55.263, having traded fastest laps with Frederick Schandorff’s #70 Inception Racing McLaren LMGT3 Evo, ousting the Dane’s 3:55.406 by less than two-tenths.
TF Sport stole third place for Corvette in the last minutes and might have delivered more had the session not been red-flagged. Having improved steadily throughout, Daniel Juncadella’s 3:56.105 was half a second adrift of the provisional LMGT3 front row, but his late charge from outside the eighth place cut-off dropped Michelle Gatting’s #85 Iron Dames Lamborghini Huracan outside the window for tomorrow evening’s Hyperpole session.
The second Lamborghini fared better – Franck Perera’s times steadily improved to claw the #60 Huracan LMGT3 Evo2 into fourth place with a 3:56.153. Klaus Bachler hauled what had appeared to be a recalcitrant #92 Porsche 911 GT3 up to fifth for Manthey PureRxcing, but given Manthey’s previous form this was intriguing; its sister car also showed small but significant sector deficits, finishing the session down in sixteenth place.
Both Aston Martins showed well, the #777 D’Station Racing entry traded blows with the #27 Heart of Racing Vantage AMR LMGT3 for third early on. As times around them improved, Alex Riberas for Heart of Racing kept the #27 ahead with a 3:56.243 before Juncadella’s huge leap.
Marco Sorensen’s 3:56.500 had endured well throughout the session, but was pipped for seventh by a charging Larry Ten Voorde in the #66 JMW Motorsport Ferrari, a 3:56.443 for the Dutch driver was the best of the Ferrari entries, which always seemed out of touch.
Neither Vista AF Corse cars troubled the top 10, while the earlier pace of the #86 GR Racing 296 LMGT3 was never revisited, the black and orange liveried Ferrari retired early with continuing electrical issues.
Akkodis ASP Team’s Lexus pairing showed promise in the hands of Esteban Masson, the #87 car was the better of the two, but still only able to round off the top ten after he led FP1 in the afternoon.
Feature image © BMW Motorsport
