Mercedes-AMG Team Lone Star Racing and Jules Gounon have won the pole for the 6th running of the Indianapolis 8 Hour Presented by AWS, following a post-qualifying penalty issued to the #51 Random Vandals Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO, which had originally taken the top spot in Friday’s Pole Shootout.
Five BMW M4 GT3 EVOs made it to the Pole Shootout, and early on, the favourites for pole position were, as usual, the two Team WRT BMWs. Raffaele Marciello won this skirmish over Intercontinental GT Challenge title rival Kelvin van der Linde: The Swiss driver in the red #777 BMW set a 1:22.316, besting his South African counterpart in the #46 BMW by less than a tenth of a second.
Both cars then retreated to the pits, and the #80 Lone Star Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO began to climb towards the top of the leaderboard. And with less than five minutes left, Jules Gounon set a 1:22.283 to take provisional pole, following up on the #80’s leading three-driver run in the first round of Qualifying.
But trailing right behind Gounon was the decade-long BMW M factory ace Eng, already an Indy 8 Hour winner, who drove the white and green #51 BMW to pole with a 1:22.271, usurping Gounon by just 0.012 seconds.
Eng and Random Vandals’ triumph was short-lived, however, following technical inspection when the #51 BMW was found to be under its minimum Balance of Performance weight. All of Eng’s times were invalidated, and the car was moved to tenth position on the grid, last of all cars that progressed out of the first round of Qualifying.
That now moves the #80 Lone Star Racing Mercedes of Gounon, Maxime Martin, and Lin Hodenius to pole position, and moves the two Team WRT BMWs up to second and third on the grid.
Salvaging some dignity for Random Vandals, Connor De Phillippi qualified fourth in the #99 Random Vandals BMW, two positions ahead of the #34 JMF Motorsports Mercedes-AMG of Lucas Auer in sixth.
De Phillippi and Kenton Koch currently lead the GT World America Pro championship over JMF Motorsports’ Michai Stephens and Mikaël Grenier heading into their season finale.
Chaz Mostert was fifth-fastest in the #75 75 Express Mercedes-AMG, in between the championship contenders and clear of co-driver Kenny Habul’s IGTC Independent Cup rivals (Ralf Bohn and Antares Au), who both didn’t get their cars into the Pole Shootout.
Maro Engel put the #888 Team GMR Mercedes-AMG seventh on the grid, ahead of the only Porsche in the pole shootout, the #120 Wright Motorsports 911 GT3 R of Laurin Heinrich. All nine cars that set a time (before the penalty to Eng’s car) were covered by just 0.687 seconds.
The only car that didn’t attempt a Pole Shootout run was the #29 Turner Motorsport BMW; Robby Foley was set to drive, but a technical issue was spotted before the Pole Shootout, and the Turner team will start ninth tomorrow as they bid for the GT World America Pro-Am championship.
Tomorrow’s eight-hour race into the night starts at 12:20 PM ET (local time) with free streaming coverage on the SRO GTWorld YouTube channel and the official SRO app.
Feature image © Fabian Lagunas / SRO Motorsports America
