A late flying lap by Alessandro Pier Guidi put Ferrari on pole for the opening round of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup at Monza.
Driving the 488 GT3 entered by AF Corse, Pier Guidi reeled off a time of 1:47.423s to secure the top spot in the third and final 10-minute qualifying session.
The Ferrari factory GT driver will share the #50 car with Pasin Lathouras and Michele Rugolo during Sunday afternoon's three-hour contest.
Joining Pier Guidi on the front row of the grid will be the Grasser Racing Lamborghini Huracan, qualified by Norbert Siedler.
A 1:47.485s effort from Siedler – again during Q3 when fuel levels were at their lowest – prevented a Ferrari one-two by forging a split between Pier Guidi's time and that of Davide Rigon in the SMP Racing 488 GT3 shared with Viktor Shaitar and Miguel Molina.
Rigon, who like Pier Guidi is part of Ferrari's factory driver lineup in the World Endurance Championship, fell 0.025 seconds short of Siedler who in turn was 0.062 seconds from snatching pole.
Completing the second row of the grid will be the all-British M-Sport Bentley Continental GT3 driven by Steven Kane/Oliver Jarvis/Guy Smith.
Row three is made of up of the Mirko Bortolotti/Andrea Caldarelli/Christian Engelhart Lamborghini (Grasser Racing) and the Matt Parry/Struan Moore/Matt Simmons Nissan GT-R (Team RJN).
Pole position in Pro/Am went to the Aston Martin crew of Oman Racing, thanks to a 1:47.807s flyer from works driver Jonny Adam.
Adam qualified seventh overall in the Vantage V12 he shares with Ahmad Al-Harthy.
A major incident at the start of qualifying involving the #66 Attempto Racing Lamborghini and the #2 WRT Racing Audi R8 LMS prevented both cars from taking part in the session.
At the start of the first flying lap Luca Filippi, who was driving the Lamborghini, locked up and caught the rear of Nathanael Berthon on the run into turn one.
The ensuing contact ripped off the front-end of the Huracan, whilst Berthon was forced to withdraw the Audi he shares with Benoit Treluyer and Stephane Richelmi from the remainder of qualifying.
Both drivers walked away from the incident unscathed, but equally both teams face a race against time to get ready for the three-hour race which starts at 14:45 local time.
Strakka Racing's McLaren 650S that was involved in a crash during free practice will start 40th after mechanics stayed up until half six in the morning to make repairs.






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