Germany has secured a dominant pole position for tomorrow’s GT qualifying race at Circuit Ricardo Tormo.
The grid was decided by a pair of 15-minute sessions which ran back to back. One driver from each crew contested the first session, while their respective teammates took the controls for the second session. The average of each car’s combined times set the grid for tomorrow’s qualifying race.
Hubert Haupt put the German-livered Mercedes-AMG on top in Q1 with a time of 1m32.937s, establishing a comfortable advantage of 0.666s over the second-fastest car. This put Finn Wiebelhaus in a very strong position to secure pole, which the youngster did in style by topping his qualifying segment with a 1m31.924s.
Team Great Britain’s Chris Froggatt was a close second in Q2, lapping just 0.080s shy of Wiebelhaus. This was enough to elevate the UK-flagged Ferrari to P2 on the grid for tomorrow’s qualifying race after James Cottingham had placed fourth in Q1. Lithuania will start third on the grid with Arūnas Geciauskas (2nd in Q1) and Jonas Karklys (3rd in Q2), while China bagged fifth with Yaqi Zhang (3rd) and Kang Ling (6th). Both of these entries run Audi machinery.
Row three is also an all-Audi affair consisting of Ukraine and defending gold medallist France. Thereafter the grid will be made up by Switzerland, Japan, Spain, Qatar, Chinese Taipei and Malaysia. Tomorrow’s qualifying race gets underway at 11:05, with the finishing order defining the grid for the medal race at 16:30.