Close qualifying at Monza – updated

The qualifying to round four of the European Le Mans Series was run on the historical track Monza, in the northern part of Italy.

The session started with nine GTE cars.

AF Corse Ferrari #88 continued the good streak from the practices and snatched P1, already after the first flying lap.

Some of the teams decided to pit for new tires and gave it another try.

Spirit Of Race Ferrari #55, however, continued on the track, where Alessandro Pier Guidi set the fastest time. Even though others tried to beat him, Alessio Rovera in AF Corse Ferrari #88 had to be happy with P2, while Ross Gunn brought TF Sport Aston Martin #95 up to third place, followed by the two Proton Competition Porsche #77 and #93.

There were four different GTE cars n Pole, in the fourth round of the season.

15 LMP3 cars rolled into the track for their ten-minute qualifying, just as the asphalt temperature reached fifty degrees!

Malthe Jakobsen in RLR MSport #15 was the first driver to set the fastest time, before United Autosports #2 woke up and knocked him off the top stop. Jakobsen retaliated on his second flying lap, before DKR Engineering #4 came and joined the fun.

Inter Europol Competition #13 was also super fast and took second place, but there were still four minutes left.

Laurents Hörr in DKR Engineering #4 had done a fantastic flying lap and therefore taken Pole Position, ahead of Inter Europol Competition #13 with Ugo de Wilde, while Garett Grist in Team Virage #20 moved up to P3 – 0,096 second from Pole Position.

Last but not least, the 18 LMP2 cars took their turn. There should have been 19 cars, but United Autosports #32 had pulled out from the weekend due to a positive COVID-19 result from Job van Uitert, after the entire team got tested on Thursday.

Team WRT #41 was the fastest time after completing their first flying lap, followed by United Autosports #22, which was one of the teams already pitted after their first flying lap.

Two minutes before the session ended, G-Drive Racing #26 shot up to the first place, but the other teams still had a chance to try and beat them.

But nobody managed to do it, so Franco Colapinto in G-Drive Racing #26 could be excited about his first Pole Position in ELMS. He shares the car with Roman Rusinov, and his Danish substitute Mikkel Jensen.

Jonathan Aberdein in United Autosports #22 took P2 for the team, so they could be a bit happy about it even though it wasn’t Pole. Team WRT #41 with Louis Deletraz was the third-fastest, but he immediately got called in by the stewards for ignoring blue flags.

DragonSpeed USA #21 with Ben Hanley behind the wheel, set the fastest LMP2 Pro/Am lap time, after it looked like for a long time that Racing Team Turkey #34 would’ve had secured it.

That was the finish of the exciting qualifying. The race starts tomorrow at 11 o’clock and can be streamed on already from 10.40.

Update:

Team WRT #41 had their best time deleted for blocking G-Drive Racing #25 on the track. Their second-best time was, however, enough to keep them in the third position.