UPDATE: After qualifying the #84 ANS Motorsport Ligier, which qualified second in LMP3 Pro/Am, was disqualified as the car’s diffuser was found to be over the maximum width required. “The team representative acknowledged the error and thought it was caused by a previous repair,” the document revealed.
This promoted the #71 Rinaldi Racing and #62 Bretton Racing Ligiers to second and third on the grid in Pro/Am for tomorrow’s finale.
Hadrien David scored his third consecutive Michelin Le Mans Cup pole position in qualifying ahead of tomorrow’s season finale in Portimāo.
David, piloting the #85 R-ace GP Duqueine D09 – Toyota in which he and Hugo Schwarze have already secured the 2025 title, set a 1:38.160 on his second timed lap, which was never truly threatened.
At the time, it put the French driver over a second clear of the rest of the LMP3 field, although Gebhardt Motorsport’s Oscar Tunjo subsequently reduced the pole margin to only 0.409 seconds aboard the #70 Duqueine.
Third went to Mattéo Quintarelli in the #50 23Events Racing Ligier JS P325. Quintarelli’s 1:38.755 was the best time set after a mid-session Red Flag, which was deployed at the halfway mark due to a spin at Turn 8 for CD Sport’s Thomas Imbourg.
The #87 CLX Motorsport Ligier of Pierre-Alexandre Provost was fourth, ahead of the #16 Team Virage and #25 Reiter Engineering entries. A further four Ligiers completed the top 10.
Further down the field, in 11th overall, Henry Cubides Olarte recorded the Adess AD25’s best qualifying result of the season aboard the #4 Nielsen Racing entry. The sole Ginetta G61-LT-P235-EVO in the field, the #3 DKR Engineering effort, qualified 14th.
LMP3 Pro/Am pole position, for the second time this season, went to Terrence Woodward in the #28 23Events Racing Ligier, with a 1:40.429.
Woodward was 0.147 seconds faster than the #84 ANS Motorsport Ligier of Julien Lemoine, which enters tomorrow’s race in a must-win scenario if it is to steal the inaugural LMP3 Pro/Am title.
Lemoine spent most of qualifying trading the fastest lap with High Class Racing’s Audunn Gudmundsson, before Woodward set his decisive time with four minutes to go.
Drivers’ championship leader Stefan Aust was third in the #71 Rinaldi Racing Ligier, ahead of the #62 Bretton Racing entry and Gudmundsson’s #49 Ligier. The other title contenders, the #98 Motorsport98 and #66 Rinaldi Racing efforts, qualified 12th and 14th respectively.
And in GT3, it was a successful return to Le Mans Cup competition for Blackthorn, as Alexander Martin dominated qualifying in its #91 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo.
The Briton set four consecutive fastest lap times, with the best of them, a 1:44.555, putting him an eventual 0.365 seconds clear of series debutant Pascal Huteau in the #11 Code Racing Development Aston Martin.
“I enjoyed it out there!” Martin said. “I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing as we had no radio. The radio stopped working, so I just kept going until they waved the board at me to tell me to come in.”
The pair of Vantage GT3 Evos were over one second clear of the rest of the GT3 runners, headed by Silverstone-winner Vanina Ickx in the #83 Iron Dames Porsche 911 GT3 R (992).
Best of the drivers’ title protagonists was current championship leader Alessandro Cozzi, who was fourth fastest in the #51 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3, and crucially ahead of the pair of Kessel Racing Ferraris.
Only seven GT3 competitors took to the circuit, with the #95 Ebimotors Porsche not participating in qualifying.
The final race of the 2025 Le Mans Cup season is set to get underway at 09:30 local time tomorrow morning.
Images courtesy of Le Mans Cup and Blackthorn AMR
