The reigning world champion secured the top spot on the starting grid again today, but he had to dig deep indeed during the tightest Hyperpole shootout in history.
At its title defence off to a winning start on home soil, Ferrari topped four of the five testing and practice sessions around the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari, but when it came to qualifying for tomorrow’s FIA World Endurance Championship curtain-raising contest, the Prancing Horse’s rivals applied some serious pressure.
Ferrari’s all-conquering 499P was still firmly in the mix – courtesy of Giovinazzi and countryman Antonio Fuoco, with the pair initially trading fastest laps in the top ten Hyperpole showdown – but so too were Toyota and Peugeot.
Rising star Malthe Jakobsen produced a stellar effort in Team Peugeot TotalEnergies’ #94 9X8, but as the clock ticked down towards zero, Ryō Hirakawa stormed to the summit of the standings in TOYOTA RACING’S heavily-updated #8 TR010 Hybrid.
That looked to be that, but Giovinazzi had other ideas. On the very last lap of the session, the Italian thrilled the thousands of tifosi packing the circuit grandstands to snatch pole position by the margin of just 0.011 seconds, with the leading quartet blanketed by a miniscule 0.073 seconds as Hirakawa, Fuoco and Jakobsen rounded out the front two rows of the grid.
“That was a lot more difficult than last year!” quipped Giovinazzi of his fourth career pole in FIA WEC competition. “After seeing Toyota run on the medium tyres in the first part of qualifying, we knew they would be a threat in Hyperpole, and with the hotter temperatures compared to last year, our car wasn’t so easy to drive.
“I was on an even quicker lap earlier in the session until I made a mistake, so I’m really happy that in the end I was able to do enough because we know how important track position is here, but it was certainly intense and it will make for a fun race to watch tomorrow, that’s for sure!”
Not only were the overall top four covered by the tiniest gap in the series’ 102 events to-date, but a mere 0.674secs from first to tenth marked a record in the Hyperpole era, with intriguing stories up-and-down the 17-strong field.
As it bids to rediscover its title-winning ways, Toyota will be hoping history repeats itself in 24 hours’ time. The Japanese car marker’s #8 entry lined up on the front row for the marque’s 50th outing in the championship, and also for its 75th. On both occasions, it went on to triumph. Tomorrow, Toyota makes its 100th FIA WEC start…
Peugeot will similarly fancy its chances of success after coming the closest it has ever done to pole, while Norman Nato pulled a strong lap out of the bag to grab fifth spot in the #12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA contender, after the race-winning V-Series.R had struggled throughout free practice and the opening phase of qualifying.
As the South Korean manufacturer makes its eagerly-anticipated motorsport debut this weekend, Mathieu Jaminet and André Lotterer put Genesis Magma Racing’s pair of GMR-001 prototypes 16th and 17th on the grid – the former, encouragingly, barely a second adrift of the outright benchmark.
Fleming flies to LMGT3 pole as Garage 59 dazzles on debut
Garage 59 made a grand entrance into the FIA World Endurance Championship today (18 April), as rising star – and series rookie – Tom Fleming produced a scintillating performance to top the timesheets in the first Hyperpole shootout of the season at Imola.
For much of the ten-minute session, Fleming looked untouchable as he set purple sector after purple sector, and while the opposition narrowed the gap later on, ultimately, nobody could hold a candle to the McLaren racer, who shares the #10 720S Evo with fellow FIA WEC newcomers Marvin Kirchhöfer and Antares Au.
“We were a bit up-and-down throughout free practice, but Antares put a really good lap in to get us into Hyperpole and then I ‘pulled the pin’, as they say,” reflected Fleming after securing McLaren’s fourth LMGT3 pole, tying British rival Aston Martin for the most in-class. “The car felt really good and I gave it everything I could – we left nothing on the table.
“McLaren and Garage 59 worked extremely hard over the winter and have done an outstanding job to give us the best possible car, and I’m so grateful for that. The paddock here is something different, and it’s really good to see sportscar racing in such a healthy position. To be on pole for my first race is pretty surreal, to say the least!”
The 23-year-old Brit wound up 0.226secs clear of his closest challenger, with Akkodis ASP Team ultimately sewing up second and third positions courtesy of impressive efforts from Hadrien David – another series debutant – in the #78 Lexus RC F and stablemate Clemens Schmid in the sister #87 entry.
The Austrian endured a wild ride through the gravel at Rivazza on his penultimate lap that scuppered a potential pole bid, while the top five was rounded out by Parker Thompson and Sean Gelael in Team WRT’s brace of BMW M4s.
The Hyperpole session was red-flagged in the closing stages, after Salih Yoluç spun the #34 Racing Team Turkey by TF Corvette into the Piratella gravel trap. Team-mate Peter Dempsey had earlier set an astonishing pace in the American machine to leave his Bronze-graded rivals trailing on his return to full-time competition for the first time since 2013.
The 6 Hours of Imola will get underway at 13:00 CEST tomorrow (Sunday, 19 April).
