Gimmi Bruni took the chequered flag to claim the third pole position of the year for himself and Toni Vilander in the no51 AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italia, finishing the 20-minute qualifying session ahead of the no71 Ferrari of Davide Rigon and James Calado.
The session was delayed when there was a brief failure of the floodlight system one minute into qualifying earlier this evening, which was caused by a local outage at the BIC. As the lights take several minutes to reset, they were back on 20 minutes later and the session was restarted with the full 20 minutes of qualifying on the clock.
The 1m58.347 average lap for Bruni and Vilander is a new qualifying record for the LMGTE Pro class at Bahrain, beating the previous record of 1m58.805 by nearly 0.5 seconds. The no71 Ferrari was just 0.041s adrift of its Ferrari teammates but a post qualifying penalty for the no71 Ferrari for abusing track limits meant the deletion of the best lap time for James Calado and has resulted in the Calado and Rigon starting the race from the back of the grid.
However the extra championship point for pole position for the no51 car extends Ferrari’s lead in the FIA World Endurance Cup for GT Manufacturers to 5 points, with the two Team Manthey Porsche 911s qualifying in 5th and 7th.
The no95 Aston Martin Racing Vantage was third quickest, 0.3s behind the lead Ferrari, with the no99 Aston Martin in 4th just 0.118 behind their Danish teammates.
The no98 Aston Martin Racing Vantage of Paul Dalla Lana and Pedro Lamy took its fifth pole position of the season with an average lap time of 2m00.522, 0.422 seconds ahead of the no50 Larbre Competition Corvette of Paolo Ruberti and Gianluca Roda. LMGTE Am Class leaders Alexsey Basov and Andrea Bertolini in the no72 SMP Racing Ferrari were third quickest with a 2m00.988. The Russian team’s only rivals for the 2015 title, the no83 AF Corse Ferrari of Emmanuel Collard and Francois Perrodo, posted an average lap time of 2m01.796 lap and finished the session in 4th place.
The no77 Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche of Patrick Long and Christian Ried and the no96 Aston Martin Racing Vantage of Stuart Hall and Roald Goethe were 5th and 6th fastest respectively while the no88 Abu Dhabi-Proton Racing Porsche hit a problem and failed to complete qualifying.
The grid is now set for the final race of the 2015 season. With all the LMGTE titles still up for grabs, the Bapco 6 Hours of Bahrain will be one of the most interesting encounters this season. The race gets underway at 15h00 (local) on Saturday 21 November, with the chequered flag dropping at 21h00 and the 2015 world champions will be known.
CLICK HERE for the result from Qualifying
QUALIFYING FACTS
