Rebellion and Aston Martin on pole in Austin

Qualifying for Lone Star Le Mans held no surprises, with a hierarchy relatively similar to that seen during free practice.

Published on 23/02/2020 à 06:35

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Rebellion and Aston Martin on pole in Austin

As is customary, the GTEs got the ball rolling during qualifying. In Pro, Aston Martin Racing confirmed its good intentions. The No. 95 Vantage AMR of Marco Sorensen and Nicki Thiim, credited with an average time of 2'00"733, took its first pole position of the season.

The Danish pair, leader of the championship, is finally ahead of the best by 0”219 Porsche, namely the n°92 of Christensen-Estre, and 0 »296 the second Vantage AMR, the n°97 of Lynn-Martin. The fastest of Ferrari, Pier Guidi-Calado's No. 51 is 4th, but only 0"3 behind the benchmark, while the all-new Corvette C8.R, which is freelancing here in Texas, is 2"2, certainly due to of a BoP that is too penalizing.

In GTE Am, the advantage went to the #56 Porsche of Team Project-1 entrusted to Perfetti-Hörr-Cairoli in 2’02”784. The top three is completed by the No. 98 Aston Martin Vantage AMR of Dalla Lana-Turner-Gunn and the No. 911 77 RSR of Dempsey-Proton Racing (Ried-Campbell-Pera).

As the light faded, the Prototypes set off to tease the clock, and the Success Handicap hierarchy was respected. Gustavo Menezes and Norman Nato gave Rebellion Racing, in 1’47”530, a third pole in a row in WEC despite an engine problem encountered in FP2 and a red flag caused by the brief stop on the side of the #07 High Class Racing Oreca 33.

The American and the Frenchman, who shares the wheel with Bruno Senna, are respectively 1”6 and 1”9 ahead of the Toyota TS050 Hybrid n°7 (Kobayashi-Lopez-Conway) and n°8 (Buemi-Nakajima-Hartley). If logic would have dictated that the latter should be ahead of the sister car, Brendon Hartley had his best lap canceled for putting all four wheels outside the track limits.

In LM P2, pole position went unsurprisingly to the No. 07 Cool Racing Oreca 42 driven for the occasion by Nicolas lapierre and Antonin Borga. The astonishing Swiss team precedes the No. 22 United Autosports Oreca, entrusted this evening to Filipe Albuquerque and Phil Hanson and theAlpine A470 n°36 from Ragues-Laurent-negrao.