Hyett Beats Al Harthy to Take First LMP2 Pole

PJ Hyett claimed his first pole position in LMP2 racing by beating Ahmad Al Harthy and Salih Yoluc to top qualifying for the 4 Hours of Dubai.

The American Bronze-rated driver steered his AO Racing-liveried, Proton Competition-entered No. 55 Oreca 07 Gibson to a best lap of 1:48.873, outpacing Al Harthy by a mere 0.046 seconds.

It marks Hyett’s first time leading an LMP2 qualifying session in only his fourth appearance behind the wheel of the Oreca, following on from the first two Asian Le Mans Series races in Sepang and last week’s Rolex 24 at Daytona.

Al Harthy will line up second aboard the 99 Racing entry, with Yoluc third behind the wheel of the No. 90 TF Sport Oreca.

Giorgio Roda completes the second row of the grid for Proton Competition, ahead of Duqueine Team’s John Falb and the No. 83 AF Corse machine of Francois Perrodo.

In LMP3, Alexander Bukhantsov beat Julien Gerbi to pole by reeling off a best lap of 1:55.118 aboard the No. 17 Cool Racing Ligier JS P320 Nissan.

Gerbi’s best effort, driving for Bretton Racing, fell 0.339 seconds short of Bukhantsov’s pole time but was still enough to beat the No. 20 High Class Racing entry of Audunn Gudmundsson by over three tenths of a second.

Anthony Liu, meanwhile, led qualifying in the GT class for Al Manar Racing by Getspeed ahead of Sainteloc Racing driver Alban Varutti.

The No. 7 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo lapped the Dubai Autodrome in a time of 1:58.280, which gave Liu an advantage of 0.131 seconds over Varutti’s No. 42 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II.

Varutti initially appeared to have been demoted to the back of the grid for track limits abuses when he dropped to the bottom of the class from second place during the session.

However, this was later corrected and the No. 42 Audi was scored as second, with the No. 91 Pure Rxcing Porsche 911 GT3 R of Alex Malykhin third.

James Cottingham picked up fourth aboard the No. 69 Optimum Motorsport McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, with the top five in class rounded out by Triple Eight JMR’s Prince Jefri Ibrahim.

The 4 Hours of Dubai kicks off Sunday at 1 p.m. local time (4 a.m. ET).

RESULTS: Qualifying