Ferrari will start tomorrow’s 24 Hours of Spa from pole position after James Calado topped the qualifying shootout.
Calado, who co-drives the Kaspersky Motorsport Ferrari 488 with Giancarlo Fisichella and Marco Cioci, clocked a time of 2:17.390s near the end of the 30-minute session.
The Brit finished 0.057 seconds ahead of Mirko Bortolotti in the Blancpain GT Series-leading Lamborghini Huracan GT3 entered by Grasser Racing, with Frederic Vervisch taking third in the #2 WRT Audi R8.
Bortolotti looked set to claim the Grasser squad’s second pole of the year when he turned in a 2:17.447s, only for Calado to surge ahead less than two minutes later.
The Top 20 shootout involved the quickest cars from Thursday's pair of open qualifying runs, with the field setting off individually in reverse order.
The result gives Ferrari its second pole of 2017, and the first for Kaspersky Motorsport which sits 10th in the BGTS Endurance standings prior to Spa.
Laurens Vanthoor took fourth in the race’s only Porsche 911 GT3-R.
The former Spa 24 winner was the third driver to set a lap time, but despite his early slot managed to set a time that would stand until Bortolotti went ahead from the 14th berth.
Aston Martin’s Jonny Adam initially crossed the line with an identical time to Vanthoor, but the Scot had his quickest lap deleted for being outside his allocated time window at the start of the session.
Adam’s back-up time was still enough to place him seventh, and preserve his status as the Pro-Am category pole-sitter.
Row three of the grid will be taken up by the Rene Rast/Antonio Garcia/Nico Muller Audi and the Jimmy Eriksson/Maximilian Buhk/Franck Perera Mercedes.
After clinching provisional pole on Thursday, Raffaele Marciello qualified the #90 AKKA-ASP Mercedes AMG-GT3 in 13th position.
The 24 Hours of Spa gets underway tomorrow (Sunday, July 29th) at 16:30 CEST.






Discussion about this post