LE MANS 24: FRONT ROW START FOR CAMPBELL
GTE-Am Front row start for Aussie Matt Campbell at Le Mans – Photo: LAT
The #7 Toyota Gazoo Racing car of Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez have taken pole position for the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Further behind however three Australians are on the grid at this weekend’s French classic, they are Matt Campbell, Ryan Briscoe and James Winslow.
Matt Campbell won the GTE Am class at the Circuit de la Sarthe with Julien Andlauer and Christian Ried in 2018. The #77 Dempsey Proton Porsche trio have started their class defence strongly with the Australian qualifying second in class.
Ryan Briscoe in the #69 Ford GT making one of his cameo appearances at the Le Mans 24 Hour race will start from 10th position in the GTE Pro class competing for the American branch of the Ford Chip Ganassi Team.
Adopted Aussie James Winslow in the #34 Inter Europol Competition car qualified 18th out of 20 cars in the LMP2 class, but stressed to Auto Action last week not to look into the qualifying pace as his team are solely focused on race pace over a full stint.
Kamui Kobayashi put Toyota on the outright pole position – Photo: LAT
During qualifying in LMP1 Kobayashi’s lap time of 3m15.908s could not be matched by World Endurance Championship leaders and defending race winners Fernando Alonso, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima in the sister #8 Toyota, qualifying second 0.411s off the pace.
Egor Orudzhev qualified third in the #17 SMP Racing car just 0.66s off pole position, the closest a privateer has qualified to a manufacturer in a very long time.
The #3 Rebellion Racing car will start fourth after also qualifying within a second of pole.
The #1 Rebellion’s session came to an early end when its engine blew with Bruno Senna behind the wheel, despite this he will line up with former Le Mans winners Andre Lotterer and Neel Jani in sixth.
Graff set the pace in LMP2 – Photo: LAT
LMP2 is as competitive as ever but it is the Graff squad who have qualified best in class with Tristan Gommendy edging out TDS Racing driver Loic Duval by a quarter of a second. The #31 DragonSpeed car which crashed heavily with the pole-sitting Toyota in the opening qualifying session set the third fastest LMP2 time.
The GTE Pro class features an impressive five manufacturers in the top five positions. It was the #95 Aston Martin of Marco Sorensen, Nicki Thiim and Darren Turner who qualified fastest 0.11s faster than the #67 Ford GT with Harry Tincknell at the wheel, followed by the #63 Corvette, #93 Porsche and #82 BMW.
The only manufacturer to miss the top five was Ferrari, the highest 488 GTE car will start 8th in class.
Porsche locked out the top three spots in GTE Am, Matt Campbell qualifying just 0.2s behind teammate Matteo Cairoli and 0.299s ahead of the #86 Gulf Racing Porsche in third.
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