Ultra close qualifying at Silverstone

The qualifying of European Le Mans Series 4 hour race was run at Silverstone in England.

Seven GTE cars would be the first to start their quali.

Spirit of Race Ferrari #55  quickly set a fast time, but they were beaten right away by Proton Competition Porsche #88 and Gulf Racing UK Porsche #86.

The times changed back and forth, and some of them got deleted due to track limits. It was the case with Krohn Racing Ferrari #83 and JMW Motorsport #66.

Spirit of Race Ferrari #55 came in and changed tires, so did Krohn Racing #83. It didn’t, however, give any advantage for #55 since their lap was deleted because of a track limit violation. Andrea Bertolini in #83 couldn’t improve the car’s position either, so they remained P7 in the class.

Instead it was Proton Competition Porsche #77 and #88 as the two fastest, ahead of Gulf Racing UK Porsche #86. JMW Motorsport Ferrari #66 was fourth fastest in front of Spirit of Race Ferrari #55 and Ebimotors Porsche #80. It was the first Pole Position for Norwegian Dennis Olsen.

Proton Competition Porsche #77
Photo: JJ Media

And then it was time for the LMP3 class to do their 10-minute qualifying

Inter Europol Competition #14 had a little spin, but it didn’t take long before they were back on the right direction.

United Autosports #3 was the first car to set a quick laptime – only 0,004 faster than EuroInternational #12.

Christian Stubbe Olsen’s teammate Alex Kapadia did the qualifying for Ecurie Ecosse/Nielsen #7 and pushed to the limit, with a huge skid through the Stowe corner. It looked great, but didn’t really improve the time. He came back after that and set 7th quickest time amongst the LMP3 cars.

With only a minute left, United Autosport #2 snatched first position, before EuroInternational #12 beat them to it. 360 Racing #6 was on the way to grab Pole Position but they lost too much time in the last sector, so they ended up with second place ahead of United Autosport #2 and #3.

Mattia Drudi was the driver who took the Pole Position for EuroInternational #12. We know Drudi from Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup, but now he also jumps to long distance races.

EuroInternational #12
Photo: JJ Media

The LMP2 class was also filled with action with their 16 cars.

G-Drive Racing #40 was the first one setting a fast time, but they got beaten by Duqueine Engineering #29.

High Class Racing #49 was driving nice laptimes, until Anders Fjordbach went in and got four brand new Dunlop slicks on the car.

DragonSpeed #21 with Ben Hanley topped the table with five minutes left.

Nico Jamin in Duqueine Engineering #29 had a tour on the grass in the Becketts corner with full speed. Luckily, he could steer it back to the asphalt about 100 metres later.

Panis Barthez Competition #23
Photo: JJ Media

Panis Barthez Competition #23 did a fantastic lap, which was 0,7 seconds faster than everyone else. G-Drive Racing #26 with Jean-Eric Vergne was on top but had to be happy with P2 after a super lap by Will Stevens in #23. It was the first Pole Position for Ligier this season, which so far had been dominated by ORECA cars.

High Class Racing #49 ended up on P7 as the best placed Dallara car.

Now the teams have two hours to get the cars ready before the pits will open at 14.30 local time, or 15.30 CET.

Related Posts