Aston Martin Racing today claimed pole position in both the LMGTE Pro and Am classes for tomorrow’s 6 Hours of Bahrain, the seventh round of the 8-race FIA World Endurance Championship.
Darren Turner and Stefan Mucke in the No.97 Vantage V8 claimed their second pole of the season in the Pro category with a 4-lap average lap time of 1:58.805, while the No.95 ‘Dane Train’ of Kristian Poulsen, David Heinemeier Hansson and Nicki Thiim remarkably, for a three-time race winner, claimed its first pole of 2014 in a time of 1:59.589.
The British-German duo in the No.97 didn’t have it all their own way, however. They were pushed to the final seconds of the 25-minute qualifying session by the GT championship-leading No.51 AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italia of Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander. The Italian set the fastest GTE lap of the weekend so far (1:58.122), but a minor error on the Finn’s final lap meant that the average of the two best laps of the two drivers put them 0.27s behind pole.
Third in the class was the sister AF Corse car, the No.71 of Davide Rigon and James Calado, which recorded an average lap time of 1:59.226, followed by the No.99 Aston Martin of MacDowall and Rees. Despite going quicker than at any time over the weekend so far, the two Porsche Team Manthey 911 RSRs appeared to struggle in qualifying and they finished in fifth and sixth in class, a less than favourable result for Championship contender Frédéric Makowiecki in the No.92. The Frenchman badly needs a win in Bahrain tomorrow to keep alive his title hopes.
Less than a second separated the top eight cars across the two classes, and the two Aston Martin Racing entries were once again a class act in LMGTE Am. Nicki Thiim set the pace for the No.95 Vantage V8 with two quick laps which put him firmly among the fastest cars in the session, and this was then ably backed up by Kristian Poulsen. The Danes led an Aston Martin Racing 1-2 as Pedro Lamy and Christoffer Nygaard qualified less than two tenths of a second behind their team mates.
A fast-lapping Alessandro Pier Guidi and American Jeff Segal did a great combined job to put the No.61 AF Corse Ferrari 458 in third place, but their Am team mates in the No.81 – Andrea Bertolini and Michele Rugolo fared less well. A brake problem on the Ferrari meant that newly crowned ELMS LMGTE Champion Bertolini only completed two laps in qualifying and Rugolo did not drive at all. The team elected to sit out the session to fix the problem and save the tyres for tomorrow’s race.
The qualifying session today was run under the fully floodlit Bahrain International Circuit, as the majority of the race will be tomorrow. The green flag for the 6 Hours of Bahrain will be given at 15h00 local (13h00 CET) and live timing can be found via FIA WEC or on the FIAWEC App.
CLICK HERE for the results from Qualifying
Qualifying Facts
