ELMS – Panis-Barthez offers the Ligier first pole at Portimao

Nathanaël Berthon gave Panis-Barthez Competition its first pole of the season by winning qualifying for the 4 Hours of Portimao (Portugal) and the first pole of the year for a Ligier in ELMS. The driver of the No. 23 completed a lap in 1'33''575, relegating his closest rivals to more than half a second.

Dragonspeed's Oreca 07s were the closest, Nicolas lapierre placing the #21 on the front row with a tenth ahead of the #22 G-Drive Racing of Ryo Hirakawa. United Autosports, G-Drive's rival for the title, took fifth with Filipe Albuquerque failing behind the No. 07 Graff Racing Oreca 39. Andrea Belicchi placed the first Dallara P217 in seventh place with the No. 47 of Cetilar Villorba Corse.

Andrea Pizzitola ended up in the gravel after losing control of the Algarve Pro Racing Ligier JS P217 which ended up in the gravel trap, forcing the marshals to display the red flag.

AT Racing took pole in LM P3 with Mikkel Jensen setting a time of 1'40''660 in the #9 Ligier which beat the #3 United Autosports driven by Wayne Boyd by a tenth. The sister car of the team of Zak Brown and Richard Dean, the No. 2 entrusted to Sean Rayhall at the head of the category with John Falb, should start from the back of the grid. The Ligier JS P3 did not have time to set a time, the only time set by the American having been canceled following the track limits.

The session was in fact interrupted twice during LM P3 qualifying. The first red flag was displayed following an exit from the track by Dario Capitanio on the Norma M 30 of Oregon Team while the second occurred following the passage into the gravel of Antonin Borga on the Norma n°7 of Duqueine Engineering .

The Ferrari are at the forefront in GTE. The first line is monopolized by the F488s. Matt Griffin took pole for the category with a lap completed in 1'42''657 at the wheel of the #55 Spirit of Race, which was more than six tenths ahead of that of JMW Motorsport driven by Will Stevens.

The Prancing Horse would have obtained a perfect result if the second Spirit of Race Ferrari entrusted to Andrea Bertolini had not been beaten by the Porsche 911 RSR 991 Proton Competition by Matteo Cairoli. THE Aston Martin Vantage bring up the rear, the No. 90 TF Sport leading the category led by Nicki Thiim and the No. 99 Beechdean AMR of Darren Turner clocking in more than a second from the benchmark.

The start of the 4 Hours of Portimao will be given this Sunday from 14 p.m. (French time). The ELMS final will be followed live streaming on our site.