Haase Puts Land Audi on Pole for California 8H

Photo: Brian Cleary/BCPix.com

Christopher Haase put in a late flier to secure pole for he and Audi Sport Team Land in the Pole Shootout for the California 8 Hours on Saturday afternoon.

He posted a time of 1:23.660 late in the 15-minute session, which was open to the 15 quickest cars from the morning’s qualifying sessions.

He pushed Raffaele Marciello off the top of the timesheet, with the pair fighting for the Intercontinental GT Challenge title in Sunday’s race.

The German will share the car with Christopher Mies and Kelvin van der Linde.

Marciello’s time was 0.068 seconds slower in the No. 43 Strakka Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 ahead of Dries Vanthoor’s Audi Sport Team WRT-run R8 LMS GT3.

Luca Stolz took the GT3 Pro-Am pole from fourth overall for SunEnergy1 Racing with the AKKA ASP-run team’s No. 75 Mercedes which he shares with Kenny Habul and Mikael Grenier. 

Jeroen Bleekemolen put the Black Swan Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R fifth on the grid, while the Wright Motorsports Porsche will start tenth.

Tristan Vautier, who currently jointly leads the championship with Marciello, will start from sixth.

Grid positions 16th and back were set following the three qualifying sessions earlier in the day, including the GT4 pole which is held by Ian James, Preston Calvert and Matthew Keegan for Team Panoz Racing.

The California 8 Hours will get underway at 9:15 a.m. local time on Sunday.

RESULTS: Pole Shootout

Jake Kilshaw

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