Beche Charges to Monza Pole for TDS Racing x Vaillante

TDS Racing x Vaillante driver Mathias Beche charged to his second pole of the European Le Mans Series season at Monza.

The Swiss driver posted three consecutive purple times to lead Saturday’s 10-minute LMP2 session, which determined the grid for Sunday’s four-hour race in Italy.

Beche initially went quickest with a 1:38.414 effort on board the No. 31 Oreca 07 Gibson, displacing early pace-setter James Allen at the top of the times.

His next tour of the 3.6-mile Monza circuit yielded an improvement to 1:38.285, while the following attempt was even better as Beche ended up with a 1:38.032 number.

The improvements proved worthwhile as Job van Uitert qualified second in the Panis Racing Oreca with a flying lap right at the end of the session that put the Dutchman 0.281 seconds shy of pole.

Another late charger was Pietro Fittipaldi, who took third for Inter Europol Competition.

Jack Aitken initially went third-fastest, but the Free Practice 1 pace-setter for Racing Team Turkey had his best lap deleted for overstepping track limits.

Algarve Pro Racing’s Allen settled for fourth, while Yifei Ye finished fifth for Cool Racing ahead of Louis Deletraz in the championship-leading Prema Oreca.

Malthe Jakobsen delivered an impressive flying lap to go seven-tenths clear at the top of the LMP3 class order driving the No. 17 Cool Racing Ligier JS P320 Nissan.

The Dane claimed his third pole from as many events this season with a time of 1:43.627, while the next-best effort was a 1:44.421 set by Inter Europol Competition’s Nico Pino.

Pino initially went quickest by just 0.001 seconds ahead of United Autosports’ Kay van Berlo, shortly before both Ligier drivers were soundly beaten by Jakobsen.

The LMP3 session was red-flagged with two minutes to go when Antoine Doquin spun his Cool Racing Ligier halfway around Parabolica and ended up deep in the gravel.

No improvements were made at the head of the order when action resumed after a brief stoppage.

In GTE, Christian Ried claimed his first career ELMS class pole for his own Proton Competition team with a time of 1:48.859 in the No. 77 Porsche 911 RSR-19.

Ried went quickest in a battle with Sarah Bovy before making a further improvement on his final lap to go a quarter of a second clear of the Iron Lynx Ferrari driver.

Bovy has now come close to claiming pole on three occasions this season, after qualifying third at Paul Ricard and second at Imola. 

Absolute Racing’s Andrew Haryanto placed third, six-tenths off the overall pace in the No. 18 Porsche, while Giacomo Petrobelli took fourth driving for JMW Motorsport.

RESULTS: Qualifying