The qualifying to the European Le Mans Series was run on a dry and sunny track, even though the meteorologists had predicted rain at that time.
It started with the eight GTE cars on Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for their ten-minute session.
After the first flying lap, Iron Lynx Ferrari #80 was in P1, but there were still about six minutes left.
Everyone chose to put on new tires after their first flying lap.
It meant that the drivers had potentially two laps to decide their starting positions.
Proton Competition Porsche #77 did a quick lap time, while Iron Lynx Ferrari #80 made a mistake on their lap and couldn’t improve their time.
#77 with Gianmaria Bruni (plus Jaxon Evans and Christian Ried) snatched Pole Position, ahead of Iron Lynx Ferrari #80 with Miguel Molina (plus Matteo Cressoni and Rino Mastronardi), while Iron Lynx Ferrari #83 with Rahel Frey (plus Manuela Gostner and Michelle Gatting) scored their best starting position in P3.
Photo: JJ Media
The sixteen LMP3 cars were next on the track.
RLR MSport #15 was the first team out, with Malthe Jakobsen in the car to do the qualifying. He was also the first driver to set a fast time, before it got beaten by United Autosports #2 and Inter Europol Competition #13. Jakobsen, however, retaliated on his second flying lap and seized P1.
Team Virage #20 was the only team to pit for new tires, while all the others kept driving.
United Autosports #3 also wanted to be first, and they managed to do it with Duncan Tappy (plus Jim McGuire and Andrew Bentley) to keep the Pole Position, with RLR MSport #15 with Malthe Jakobsen (plus Mike Benham and Alex Kapadia) in second place, and United Autosports #2 with Wayne Boyd (plus Rob Wheldon and Edouard Cauhaupe) in third. The top 3 was only separated by 0,062 second. So it was super close. We would need to go further back in P4 to find the first Duqueine D08 car, while the top consisted of Ligier JS P320 cars.
Photo: JJ Media
Finally, sixteen LMP2 cars plus the innovative car went out to do their qualifying.
United Autosports set two fastest times after the first flying laps. Both G-Drive Racing cars, however, waited in the pits and would only do a single lap, opposite to the other teams with two laps. Many teams chose to change tires after their first flying lap, but it would cost them a set of fresh tires in the race.
DragonSpeed #21 chose to continue on their tires and jumped up to P1.
Team WRT #41 was the first team to improve their lap time on new tires. However, it turned out that G-Drive Racing #26 had done the right thing when Nyck de Vries (and teammates Roman Rusinov and Franco Colapinto) took Pole Position, ahead of Team WRT #41 with Louis Deletraz (as well as Robert Kubica and Yifei Yi), and Panis Racing #65 with Will Stevens (plus Julien Canal and Gabriel Aubry). The top 7 were separated by under a second.
Photo: JJ Media
The 4-hour race will be run at 11 o’clock CET and can be streamed on the series’ YouTube channel, which will start the stream at 10.40.
