Antonio Giovinazzi took pole for the FIA World Endurance Championship in the #51 Ferrari, setting a 1:28.890 around Imola to take pole for the Italian brand on home turf.
The satellite #83 AF Corse Ferrari, driven by Robert Kubica, was second fastest, but 0.758 slower than his teammate.
In third was Dries Vanthoor, in the #15 BMW M Hybrid V8, almost a second off Giovinazzi.
Giovinazzi was quickest over the whole session, fastest in the qualifying session with Kubica and the other factory #50 Ferrari third. However, Fuoco’s lap in qualifying later got deleted for exceeding track limits at turn 15. That meant he didn’t get through to Hyperpole, and will start at the back of the Hypercar field, leaving them with a lot of work to do in the race.
This promoted the #93 Peugeot, driven by Jean-Eric Vergne, to Hyperpole.
With Ferrari on top in qualifying, the cars that went out included the other Peugeot, the #94 car driven by Stoffel Vandoorne, the #5 Porsche of Julien Andlauer, Robin Frijns in the #20 BMW, Nico Varrone in the #99 Proton Porsche, #38 Cadillac’s Sebastien Bourdais, and both Aston Martin Valkyries of Harry Tincknell and Marco Sorensen.
Over into Hyperpole, and Ferrari were, once again, dominant. However, they didsn’t set their fast laps until late on in the session, with Jean-Eric Vergne initially fastest with a 1:36.334, before the truly sub-90 second representative laps started coming in.
BMW’s D. Vanthoor was the first to go sub-90, with a 1:29.885, but the two Ferraris hadn’t come through to set the fastest laps yet.
Giovinazzi initially set a 1:29.360, before improving to his ultimate pole lap of 1:28.920. Kubica, meanwhile, set a 1:29.791, then improved slightly to his final time 1:29.678.
With Giovinazzi and Kubica locking out the front row for Ferrari and BMW’s D. Vanthoor third, fourth and fifth went to the two Toyotas, Ryo Hirakawa in the #8 machine ahead of Nyck de Vries in the sister #7.
Mick Schumacher was sixth fastest in the #36 Alpine, followed Vergne in the #93 Peugeot. Schumacher’s teammate Charles Milesi was eighth in the #35 Alpine, while Cadillac’s Alex Lynn and Porsche’s Kevin Estre rounding out the top 10.
Discussion about this post