Ferraris just off pole in qualifying at Imola

The qualifying session to decide the starting grid for round one of the GT World Challenge Europe Powered by AWS saw the Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020s improve their performance and move closer to the top positions, even though traffic impacted the final outcome. The participants are finely balanced. Of the fifty-two cars on the 4909-metre track, twenty-eight crews are within a second of each other. A red flag brought the session to an early close after an Audi spun at the Tamburello chicane and ran into the sand.

Pro. Car number 51 is the best-placed of the two Iron Lynx Ferraris entered in the category, starting from the third row with a time of 1:40.512. James Calado, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen finished 190 thousandths behind the leaders, Weerts-Vanthoor-Van der Linde, in the number 32 Audi of WRT, while the number 71, with Davide Rigon, Antonio Fuoco and Daniel Serra, completed the session in fourteenth, five-tenths down on pole. Antonio Fuoco and James Calado, returning to the category after his stint in 2020, were the fastest of the Prancing Horse drivers.

Gold. In the new SRO class, the two Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020s of AF Corse and Iron Dames will set off from second and fourth, twenty-fourth and twenty-ninth overall. Crews in this class include a Bronze driver, a Silver driver and a Gold or Platinum professional. Hugo Delacour, Cedric Sbirrazzuoli and Alessandro Balzan are just over a tenth down on the Winward Racing Mercedes, while Sarah Bovy, Rahel Frey and Michelle Gatting are 94 thousandths behind the AF Corse trio.

Pro-Am. The AF Corse Ferrari, crewed by Andrea Bertolini, Louis Machiels and Stefano Costantini, took pole with a time of 1:41.895, good enough for thirty-fifth overall on the grid. The driver from Sassuolo and his crewmates are the only ones in the class with a combined time of under 1:42.