Garage 59 Mc Laren tops qualifying at Spa 24 hours

SRO

Jun 27

A good mixture of manufacturers will be represented today at Superpole since 5 BMW, 4 Porsche, 3 Aston Martin, Mercedes-AMG and 2 Ferrari, Lamborghini did qualify yesterday evening at Spa-Francorchamps for the Superpole of the GT World Challenge Europe – Endurance Cup’s fourth round and the third of the Intercontinental GT Challenge. Only one Mc Laren was also in the mix but at the top of the timesheet of the 20 GT3 that will battle for pole at 4:10 pm local time.

One Mc Laren on top

The #59 Garage 59 trio of Joseph Loake, Marvin Kirchhoefer and Benjamin Goethe was fastest of qualifying with a combined time of 2:16.454 in their McLaren 720S GT3 Evo.

Mc Laren #59 — 📷 © Luc Warnotte at CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps. #59 Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3 Ev

BMW Team WRT second

With three PRO lineups, Team WRT is the best represented team in the 20 GT3 qualified for superpole with the #31 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Dries Vanthoor, Sheldon van der Linde and Marco Wittmann driving a combined time still 0.505 seconds slower than the McLaren trio. The team’s two other lineups, #31 Weerts-van der Linde-De Wilde and #46 Rast-Magnussen-Rossi are respectively 15th and 20th. With the two ROWE BMW M4 GT3 being 10th with Enge-Hesse-Harper in #998 and Farfus-Krohn-Marciello 16th in #98, BMW has the highest number of lineups who’ll participate to the Superpole..

Porsche third

With an average lap time of 2:17.016 minutes, former Porsche Juniors Klaus Bachler, Ayhancan Güven, and Laurin Heinrich secured third place in qualifying making it three different brands in the top three. The trio competes for the French Porsche customer team, Schumacher CLRT. The #18 Dinamic GT car qualified in eleventh place, with three more former Porsche Juniors at the wheel: Dane Bastian Buus and Porsche works drivers Matt Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet. Seventeenth place went to Rutronik Racing’s #96 entry, driven by Patric Niederhauser, Sven Müller, and Alessio Picariello. The Swede and the Belgian are also graduates of Porsche’s Junior programme. In nineteenth position was the fourth Porsche 911 GT3 R, fielded by Herberth Motorsport. Rolf Ineichen shares the cockpit with Tim Heinemann and Joel Sturm. They are one of only two teams from the Gold Cup category to have reached the Superpole session on Friday.

📷 © Luc Warnotte at CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps. #22 Schumacher CLRT Porsche 911 GT3

Laurin Heinrich (Porsche 911 GT3 R #22): “Qualifying started later than planned for us due to the red flags, so I ended up driving entirely in the dark. The drying track didn’t make things easier. To make matters even more challenging, I hadn’t driven at all during free practice – my first laps of the event came in qualifying. But as racing drivers, we thrive in challenges like this. Now, I’m very eager to fight for pole position tomorrow in the world’s biggest GT3 race.” Source: Porsche

Two Mercedes in top 5

With a pair of Mercedes-AMG filling out positions four and five, five manufacturers are represented in the top 5: #17 GetSpeed driven by Jules Gounon-Luca Stolz-Fabian Schiller is fourth and the #48 Winward MANN-FILTER entry of Mateo Cairoli, Lucas Auer and Maro Engel is fifth.

📷 © Luc Warnotte at CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps. Left: GetSpeed Mercedes-AMG #17; right: #48 Winward MANN-FILTER Mercedes-AMG GT3 in the rain… without rain the 24 Hours of Spa would not be the 24 Hours of Spa!

CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa qualifying results