The LMGT3 category witnessed a titanic tussle for pole position in qualifying for this weekend’s 6 Hours of Fuji, as Racing Spirit of Léman’s Eduardo ‘Dudu’ Barrichello saw off a dual McLaren threat to clinch the top spot on the starting grid for the second time in his FIA World Endurance Championship career.
James Cottingham and Darren Leung set the pace for McLaren in the initial phase of the two-part session, and the two United Autosports entries were similarly right up at the sharp end in the top ten Hyperpole shootout in the hands of Sébastien Baud and Sean Gelael. For a while, the pair looked set to secure a front row lockout – separated by a scant two thousandths-of-a-second – but Aston Martin ace Barrichello had other ideas.
After Anthony McIntosh had safely progressed through Q1 in only his second FIA WEC appearance, his Brazilian team-mate then picked up the mantle and vaulted ahead of the evenly-matched Gelael and Baud by a similarly slender 0.030 seconds to snatch a pole position that he admitted had looked somewhat unlikely…
“I’m really surprised to be here,” the Brazilian confessed. “We haven't had the smoothest weekend – we really, really struggled from the beginning. We were towards the back in two of the three practice sessions and we tried a lot of stuff because we knew we weren’t looking very good. We took a lot of risks, but the team has worked so well – everybody has done an amazing job.
“Tony [McIntosh] is such a legend putting us into Hyperpole again, and I had a good car underneath me. It was my first new tyre run of the weekend so I didn’t really know how to extract the grip, but I managed to put a decent lap together and it turned out to be enough. Admittedly, pole position doesn’t mean a lot in endurance racing, but it certainly makes our life easier to be starting from the front.”
Zacharie Robichon – in the 24 Hours of Le Mans’ pole-sitting entry – completed an all Aston Martin and McLaren top four in Heart of Racing Team’s Vantage, with the championship-leading Manthey 1st Phorm Porsche fifth in the hands Riccardo Pera and the twin TF Sport Corvettes close behind in sixth and seventh.
Neither BMW, Lexus nor Mercedes advanced through to Hyperpole, while Proton Competition’s #77 Ford Mustang – which came within a handful of laps of claiming its maiden victory last time out at COTA – was unable to start the session following its engine failure in FP3.
Tomorrow’s 6 Hours of Fuji will get underway at 11:00 local time (04:00 CET).
Check out the full qualifying results.
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