Chatin, IDEC Sport on Pole for 4H Red Bull Ring

Paul Loup Chatin put IDEC Sport on pole for the Four Hours of Red Bull Ring late in the qualifying session on Saturday afternoon.

The Frenchman set a time of 1:19.246 on his seventh tour of the Austrian circuit to knock Nico Jamin and Duqueine Engineering off the provisional top spot.

It’s IDEC Sport’s second consecutive pole after completing a similar feat at the 24 Hours of Le Mans last month.

Chatin shares the No. 28 Oreca 07 Gibson with Paul Lafargue and Memo Rojas. 

Jamin’s No. 29 Duqueine car will start from second after losing out by a mere 0.019 seconds to Chatin, whose time was posted after checkered flag fell on the session.

The top six positions were taken by Oreca teams while Filipe Albuquerque’s United Autosports car was the quickest Ligier JS P217 Gibson in seventh.

Felipe Nasr qualified as the fastest Dallara P217 Gibson driver in tenth for Cetilar Villorba Corse, with the top ten positions covered by less than a second.

AT Racing’s Mikkel Jensen came out on top in a hotly-contested LMP3 session with a quickest lap time of 1:26.408 in the No. 9 Ligier JS P3 Nissan.

The Dane co-drives the car with Alexander Talkanitsa Sr. and Alexander Talkanitsa Jr.

His lap was 0.111 seconds ahead of Ultimate driver Matthieu Lahaye and M Racing – YMR’s Lucas Legeret in third.

Miguel Molina put JMW Motorsport onto pole in GTE, giving Ferrari its first of the season with a time of 1:28.827.

The Ferrari factory driver will share the No. 66 yellow and black 488 GTE with Alex MacDowall and Liam Griffin and qualified 0.098 seconds clear of Matteo Cairoli’s Proton Competition Porsche 911 RSR.

A late flier moved Andrea Bertolini up into third for Krohn Racing, meanwhile.

The only notable incident of the session came when Anders Fjordbach lost his front-right wheel as he exited the pits but the High Class Racing Dallara was brought back to the pits without the need for a Full Course Yellow.

All three ten-minute sessions ran without any interruptions.

UPDATED: AT Racing Loses LMP3 Pole

AT Racing has since lost its LMP3 class pole after Jensen was judged to have exceeded track limits during his fastest lap.

This has promoted Ultimate’s No. 17 Norma M30 Nissan to class pole with the No. 19 M Racing – YMR Norma set to start second.

Jensen and his co-drivers will start from sixth place with his second fastest lap now used as qualifying time.

The Four Hours of Red Bull Ring will get underway at 12 p.m. local time on Sunday and will be streamed live on the series’ website and YouTube channel.

RESULTS: Qualifying