Paul Ricard – Qualifying: The #48 Mercedes takes pole position, Lance Stroll only 15th

They have been waiting for a pole position since 2018 and came very close to achieving it. Aston Martin thought they had secured their first pole position in eight years, but the crew of the No. 7 car (Mattia Drudi – Marco Sorensen – Nicki Thiim) were ultimately beaten at the last minute by the Mercedes Benz The #48 car will be driven by Maro Engel, Lucas Auer, and Luca Stolz. Stolz was also responsible for the last pole position for a Mercedes last year at Monza, alongside Jules Gounon and Fabian Schiller. For the fourth time in GTWC Europe, Luca Stolz and Maro Engel will start the race from pole position, scheduled for Saturday, April 11th at 6:00 PM Paris time, while it will be the second pole position in the category for Austrian driver Lucas Auer.

Behind the leading trio, the McLaren The #58 720S GT3 EVO of Thomas Fleming, Louis Prette, and Benjamin Goethe was just 0.058 seconds behind. As a reminder, in the GT World Challenge Europe, qualifying is determined by taking the average time of the three sessions (Q1, Q2, and Q3) in which the three drivers of the crew participate in turn. For McLaren, it was a strong showing with the #59 qualifying fourth, but it was the #7 Aston Martin that completed the podium for the session, setting the third fastest time.

The first Porsche 911 GT3 EVO is fifth: it is the #80 Lionspeed GP, in the hands of Bastian Buus, Thomas Preining and Ricardo Feller. The Mercedes AMG GT3 EVO of Verstappen Racing (Jules Gounon, Daniel Juncadella and Chris Lulham) was content with 8th fastest time. Gounon and Juncadella will find Max Verstappen in two weeks at the Nürburgring, but before that, it's another driver from F1 who was making his debut in the GT World Challenge Europe. For his first laps with the Aston Martin Vantage, Lance stroll and his teammates Mari Boya and Roberto Merhi will start 15th.

Sébastien Baud on pole in the Silver Cup

Just ahead of them, in 14th place, is the Classic Ferrari for sale 296 of Lilou Wadoux, Arthur Leclerc and Sean Gelael, while the crew of the BMW No. 46 of Valentino Rossi will start 11th. The nine-time world champion of MotoGP This didn't work out well for him, as he finished 35th in Q3, which dropped his car down the order. It's worth noting that a red flag interrupted qualifying after the #87 Winward Racing Mercedes (Marvin Dienst – Gabriele Piana – Rinat Salikhov) stopped on track due to a loose left front wheel. Once the car was removed, the session resumed without further major incident.

On the French side, the good news comes from Sébastien Baud, who took pole position in the Silver Cup alongside his teammates Bobe Pauwels and Oliver Söderström in the #21 Comtoyou Racing Aston Martin Vantage. A successful debut for the driver from Haute-Savoie, who recently joined the Aston Martin GT Academy. He now needs to confirm this performance in the race starting at 18 pm French time.

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GT World Challenge Europe – Paul Ricard
The qualifying rankings