Ferrari’s strong free-practice form from Friday carried through to qualifying for Saturday evening’s six-hour Blancpain GT Paul Ricard 1000km race. There were quick laps from both Lorenzo Bontempelli and Olivier Beretta in the #53 AF Corse 488 and Matteo Malucelli in the #34 Scuderia Praha machine, but in the end it was the Pro Cup-entered #50 AF Corse 488 that took pole, courtesy of Alessandro Pier Giudi’s efforts in Q3.
With just over five minutes of the final part of qualifying remaining, Steven Kane had banged in a time just a hundreth shy of 2015’s pole lap to put the #7 Bentley (above) top of the pile. A couple of minutes later, Maxime Soulet in the sister #8 car responded with a 1:56.512 to make it a Bentley front row, but the Ferraris still had an answer.
First, Beretta dropped the benchmark by a further tenth to 1:56.343 in the #53 car (above), then Pier Guidi improved his already-quick time from earlier in the session to a 1:56.343 right at the flag, making it an all-Maranello front row for the day-into-night race (and a Pro-Am pole position for the #53).
Afterwards, Pier Guidi commented: “The traffic was definitely key, along with AF Corse’s good work. The first two races were difficult, but the car was brand new. It’s taken time for us to find the way, but I’m now very happy, both for myself and the crew, because they’ve worked very hard.”
Beretta added: “We’re here to achieve a good result, but whether we fight for overall position or only the Pro-Am victory depends on race conditions. Both are important to Ferrari, which has worked very hard to sort out the new 488. There’s been a lot of testing and investment and we’ve shown that today.”
Kane and Soulet’s times were good enough to make it an all-Bentley second row, while Shane van Gisbergen got the #58 Garage 59 McLaren (above) to fifth on the grid with a 1:56.557.
After the session, Soulet said: “When the team came on the radio and said I was P1, I was like ‘wow!’ because we knew the Ferraris would be fast. In the end it wasn’t quite enough, but this is still a very good result for Bentley and one of the best since the Continental GT3 programme began. It’ll be good for both cars to start a six-hour race from third and fourth.”
Behind Van Gisbergen are two Pro-Am Ferraris: Malucelli in the Scuderia Praha 488 (a 1:56.757) and Matt Griffin in the #52 AF Corse 488 (a 1:57.092), sixth and seventh respectively.
Next up is the first of the Lamborghinis: the #19 GRT Huracan of Luca Stolz, followed by Yelmer Buurman in the #00 Black Falcon Mercedes. Completing the top 10 qualifiers is Maro Engel in Black Falcon’s #56 Pro-Am entry.
Of the main Endurance Cup championship contenders, the #84 HTP Mercedes of points leaders Buhk, Baumann and Jafaar qualified 17th overall and the #59 McLaren was fifth as mentioned above. The #1 Audi of Fred Vervisch and the Vanthoor brothers was 19th overall, with Laurens Vanthoor later owning up on Twitter that he hadn’t made the best of traffic during Q3.
Highest Am Cup qualifier is the #111 Kessel Ferrari of David Perel, Bernhard Delhez and Stephen Earle, which lines up 30th overall on the 57-car grid.
The race gets underway at 6pm local time tonight, running into the darkness until midnight.
