With the first of the two fastest laps in 8’10″992, the driver of the Bavarian manufacturer won the Glickenhaus Trophy, which is awarded to the person who takes pole position on the Green Hell.
Next to him in the front row is the Porsche #911 of Manthey EMA (Vanthoor/Estre/Güven/Preining) in “Grello” livery. Laurens Vanthoor was 0.406 seconds behind, losing potential pole position on the first lap in the final sector, where he was over a second behind Hesse.
Ricardo Feller in the #16 Audi of Scherer Sport (Stippler/Mies/Feller/Marschall) was one of the few to improve on the second flying lap, putting the #27 Lamborghini of Team ABT (K. van der Linde/Mapelli/ Pepper), who will start from the second row with him.
Scherer Sport Phx achieved an excellent performance in the previous Qualifying and was the strongest team. Christopher Haase set a time of 8’11″545, which meant fifth place on the grid for the Audi #15 (Vervisch/Haase/Winkelhock/Feller), ahead of the Ferrari #1 of Frikadelli Racing (Fernandez Laser/Keilwitz /Ludwig/Varrone) led by Daniel Keilwitz The latter also had to pass through the Top Qualifying 1.
#911 Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3 R (992): Laurens Vanthoor, Thomas Preining, Kevin Estre, Ayhancan Gu?ven
Photo by: Gruppe C GmbH
Several protagonists in the Top 10
A total of six brands made it into the Top10, but the best Mercedes-AMG GT3 did not get beyond eighth place on the grid. Fabian Schiller placed the #130 of GetSpeed (Engel/Gounon/Schiller/Christodoulou) ahead of his colleague Maximilian Götz in the #4 Mercedes of HRT (Stolz/Juncadella/Maini/Götz).
The #99 Rowe Racing BMW (Frijns/D. Vanthoor/S. van der Linde/Farfus), which had to go through TopQ1, qualified ahead of him. The fact that Augusto Farfus drove the car caused anger, because according to the regulations, a driver who drove in TQ1 is not allowed to start in TQ2.
Apparently, this went smoothly after Farfus drove the #98-branded sister car (Marciello/Martin/Wittmann/Farfus) in TQ1 and switched to the #99 for TQ2. The organizer told Motorsport.com that Race Direction examined the case, but found no violation of the regulations as the Brazilian was in two different cars.
Falken Motorsport completed the Top 10 with the #33 Porsche (Andlauer/Bachler/S. Müller/Picariello), 2.7″ behind. The team’s second 911 finished 14th, while the best Aston Martin was #35 of Walkenhorst (Hull/Mazatis/Assenheimer) 16th.
Glickenhaus-SCG #706 (Mutsch/Mailleux/Arnold/Ledogar) did not take part in the qualifying session, as the newly overhauled engine was being installed and the mechanics did not want to work the night shift.
#98 Rowe Racing BMW M4 GT3: Raffaele Marciello, Maxime Martin, Marco Wittmann Fürth, Augusto Farfus
Photo by: Gruppe C GmbH
Top Qualifying 1: GetSpeed and Rowe surrender
The first part of the qualifying session was all about staying in the top five. From the start, it was clear that there were more cars capable of taking part in TQ2 than there were actually places available. Sheldon van der Linde took the #99 BMW into the lead, followed by the #72 BMW of Dan Harper.
On the second lap, however, he was joined by Nicolas Varrone in Frikadelli’s Ferrari, who set the fastest time of the session in 8’10″889.
Behind them, things got exciting. Maro Engel, last to take to the track, took TQ2 as the best Mercedes-AMG on the first lap. Arjun Maini took a good fifth place in the #3 HRT-Mercedes (Maini/Bird/J. Owega/Beretta), ahead of his brand colleague Adam Christodoulou in the #8 GetSpeed Mercedes (Auer/Christodoulou/Ellis/Grenier) , who missed TQ2 by 0″139.
Prosport and Walkenhorst Aston Martins were also excluded, meaning only the #35 Pro-Am Class was the only Vantage in TQ2.
The biggest surprise, however, was the elimination of the #98 BMW of Rowe (Marciello/Martin/Wittmann/Farfus), which had been rebuilt after an accident in night practice. Farfus was unable to place higher than ninth, clearly missing out on a place in TQ2. This means that one of the favorites for the final victory already has a difficult task to accomplish in the first hours of the race.
The warm-up is scheduled for Saturday starting at 12.40pm. The race will then start at 4pm.
#24h #Nürburgring #Pole #Position #Max #Hesse #BMWRMG
