WEC News: Giovanazzi puts #51 Ferrari on pole at Imola

One year after storming to pole position at Imola by nearly eight-tenths of a second, Ferrari’s Antonio Giovinazzi has once again put the #51 499P on pole — but this time it took a heroic last-lap effort in the tightest Hyperpole session in FIA World Endurance Championship history.

Ferrari dominated much of the weekend on home soil, topping four of the five practice and testing sessions at the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari. When qualifying arrived for the season-opening 6 Hours of Imola, however, rivals from Toyota and Peugeot turned up the pressure.

In the top-ten Hyperpole shootout, Giovinazzi and teammate Antonio Fuoco initially traded the fastest times. But as the clock ticked down, Toyota’s Ryō Hirakawa stormed to the top in the heavily updated #8 GR010 Hybrid, while Peugeot’s rising star Malthe Jakobsen produced a standout lap in the #94 9X8.

It looked like Toyota had snatched pole — until Giovinazzi delivered. On his very last lap, the Italian thrilled the thousands of *tifosi* packing the grandstands by snatching the top spot by a razor-thin 0.011 seconds. The leading quartet was covered by just 0.073 seconds, with Hirakawa, Fuoco, and Jakobsen completing the front two rows.

“That was a lot more difficult than last year!” Giovinazzi said afterward, after claiming his fourth career WEC pole. “After seeing Toyota run on medium tyres in the first part of qualifying, we knew they would be a threat in Hyperpole. With the hotter temperatures compared to last year, our car wasn’t as easy to drive.

“I was on an even quicker lap earlier until I made a mistake, so I’m really happy that in the end I was able to do enough. We know how important track position is here, but it was certainly intense — and it will make for a fun race to watch tomorrow!”

The session delivered record-breaking closeness. Not only was the top-four margin the smallest across the championship’s 102 events to date, but the gap from first to tenth was a mere 0.674 seconds — the tightest in the Hyperpole era.

Toyota will head into Sunday’s race hopeful that history repeats itself. The #8 started on the front row for the manufacturer’s 50th and 75th WEC outings — both of which ended in victory. Tomorrow marks the Japanese giant’s 100th start in the championship.

Peugeot came closer to pole than ever before, while Norman Nato produced a strong lap to place the #12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA in fifth after the V-Series.R had struggled in practice and early qualifying.

Making its eagerly awaited WEC debut, Genesis Magma Racing qualified its pair of GMR-001 prototypes 16th and 17th through Mathieu Jaminet and André Lotterer. Encouragingly, Jaminet finished barely a second off the outright pace.

In LMGT3

Garage 59 scored a dream pole position on its FIA WEC debut. Rookie Tom Fleming set a 1:41.181 in the #10 McLaren LMGT3 Evo during Hyperpole, going fastest on his first flying lap (1:41.555) before improving further on his second.

“It’s a great feeling,” Fleming told FIA WEC TV. “Garage 59 have done an outstanding job all throughout the winter. McLaren and the team have worked extremely hard to give us the best possible car, and I definitely pulled the pin during qualifying and put a couple of laps together.”

Four different drivers briefly held provisional pole behind him, but none could match Fleming’s time. Hadrien David was best of the rest in the #78 Akkodis ASP Team Lexus RC F LMGT3, 0.226 seconds back, followed by the sister #87 Lexus of Clemens Schmid. Team WRT’s BMW M4 LMGT3 Evos came next, headed by Parker Thompson’s #69 entry, with the #61 Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG completing the top six.

Racing Team Turkey by TF had led much of qualifying with the #34 Corvette Z06 LMGT3.R, but co-driver Salih Yoluç was unable to replicate the pace in Hyperpole. He went off on his final flying lap, bringing out the red flags and dropping the car to 10th in class.

The 6 Hours of Imola gets underway tomorrow (Sunday, April 19) at 13:00 CEST.

Check out the full qualifying times.

Starting Grid