R-Motorsport Storms to Silverstone Pole

Photo: SRO/Patrick Hecq

A rapid lap from Matthieu Vaxiviere helped R-Motorsport stay on top of the timesheets all the way through qualifying to give R-Motorsport its first Blancpain GT Series pole at Silverstone on Sunday morning.

Vaxiviere, Jake Dennis and Nicki Thiim combined to set an average qualifying time of 1:56.962 to put the No. 76 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 on pole for this afternoon’s three-hour race.

The French driver set the fastest time of the weekend in the opening qualifying session with a time of 1:56.637 enough to put him almost seven-tenths clear in Qualifying 1.

Despite a quick lap from Raffaele Marciello in Q3, no one was able to topple the R-Motorsport crew on the average lap times.

Marciello’s lap, which was just 0.046 seconds slower than Vaxiviere’ time, moved the No. 88 AKKA ASP Mercedes-AMG GT3 into second overall by 0.159 seconds.

Emil Frey Lexus Racing will start from third with its No. 14 Lexus RC F GT3 while R-Motorsport put its other Aston Martin into fourth on the grid.

Belgian Audi Club Team WRT and ROWE Racing completed the top six positions, meanwhile.

The Emil Frey G3 Jaguar will start from Silver Cup pole while Team Parker Racing and Rinaldi Racing secured the Pro-Am and Am poles, respectively. 

Power steering problems prevented the No. 8 Bentley Continental GT3 from setting a time in Q1, pushing the car to the back of the field.

Q1 and Q2 each had a single red flag period to collect the Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 and No. 78 Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracan GT3.

The second round of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup will get underway at 3 p.m. local time and will be streamed live on the series’ website and GT World YouTube channel.

RESULTS: Qualifying

Jake Kilshaw

Jake Kilshaw is a UK-based journalist. He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations.