Antonio Fuoco, Davide Rigon and Daniel Serra topped the times in the #71 Iron Lynx Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo during aggregate qualifying from which the quickest 20 cars made the cut for Friday evening’s Superpole session ahead of this weekend’s double-points round of the GT World Challenge Europe.
Fuoco set the fastest time of the four 15-minute mini-sessions with a 2m16.486s to help his crew to a 2m16.920s average.
That gave them an advantage of just over a tenth from the sister Iron Lynx car shared by James Calado, Nicklas Nielsen and Miguel Molina, which ended up on a 2m17.098s.
Fuoco, who set his time in the second session, said: “We were really lucky because I got a huge tow up the straight and gained a lot of time there, but I think we do a good job putting the lap together.”
The second Iron Lynx Ferrari was another tenth up on the 2m17.237s average of Andrea Caldarelli, Marco Mapelli and Jordan Pepper in the K-Pax Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo.
Top Audi was the factory-backed Tresor car in which Christopher Haase, Mattia Drudi and Luca Ghiotto posted a 2m17.307s average to take fourth position.
#32 Team WRT Audi R8 LMS evo II GT3: Dries Vanthoor, Kelvin Van Der Linde, Charles Weerts
Photo by: Audi Communications Motorsport
A further five hundredths back in fifth was the best of the WRT Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo IIs, Dries Vanthoor, Kelvin van der Linde and Charles Weerts finishing opening qualifying on 2m17.360s.
The Rowe Racing BMW squad rounded out the top sixth courtesy of a 2m17.430s average from Augusto Farfus, Nicky Catsburg and Nick Yelloly in the fastest of the team’s M4 GT3s.
The factory Attempto Audi Markus Winkelhock, Dennis Marschall and Ricardo Feller ended up seventh.
Mercedes claimed eight, ninth and 10th positions, with the factory GetSpeed entry of Maximilian Gotz, Luca Stolz and Steijn Shothorst edging out the works cars entered by the Auto Sport Promotion and GruppeM teams.
Dinamic Motorsport led the Porsche runners in 11th place with its 911 GT3-R Pro class entry, while the fastest car Aston Martin Vantage GTE was the top-class car from the Beechdean AMR squad in 13th.
Cars that will not take part in Superpole, which will set the first 10 rows of the grid, include the WRT Audi MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi shares with Frederic Vervisch and Nico Muller and the KCMG Porsche of Nick Tandy, Laurens Vanthoor and Dennis Olsen, which was hit by braking issues.
The 30-minute Superpole session begins at 19:00 local time on Friday.