Ferrari AF Corse gave their home crowd plenty to celebrate in Imola qualifying by securing the first three spots on the grid for Sunday’s 6 Hours of Imola. Fired on by the massed ranks of tifosi, Antonio Fuoco set the fastest time of the ten-minute session of 1:29.466 in the #50 car.
Second fastest was Robert Shwartzmann in the #83 AF Corse car, followed by Alessandro Pier Guidi in the #51.
Both Porsche and Toyota leapt to the top of the timesheets during Hyperpole but were ultimately trumped by the 499Ps. The works Porsche 963s will start tomorrow’s race from fourth (#6) and fifth (#5), while the best Toyota could manage was P6 for the #7 car.
BMW sprung the biggest surprise during qualifying, with René Rast successfully progressing into the top-ten Hyperpole session. The German, who shares the #20 BMW M HYBRID V8 with Sheldon van der Linde and Robin Frijns, will start the 6 Hours of Imola from third row of the grid.
Manthey PureRxcing on top in LMGT3
Aliaksandr Malykhin put in an excellent performance in LMGT3 Hyperpole to place the #92 Manthey PureRxcing Porsche 911 GT3 R on pole position. The Lithuanian team will be looking to pick up where they left off in the first round of the season, which they won convincingly.
Starting second in class will be the #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin, with driver Ian James’ fastest time around seven tenths slower than Malykhin’s.
Third and fourth on the grid will be the pair of Team WRT BMW M4 LMGT3s. The #46 car – piloted by Valentino Rossi and another fan favourite at Imola this weekend – was third fastest in the session at the hands of Ahmad Al Harthy. The #31 sister car was just six thousands of a second further back in P4.
After topping the timesheets in FP1 and FP2, the TF Sport Corvettes were notable absentees from the Hyperpole session. Both cars missed out on the top-ten shootout by a couple of tenths.
The race is scheduled to start at 1:00 pm local time tomorrow. For a full list of results, click here.