Tincknell Puts Jota Sport Zytek on Pole for ELMS Season Opener

Jota Sport has clinched pole position for the 4 Hours of Silverstone, the opening round of the European Le Mans Series season. On his series debut Harry Tincknell was the fastest driver in qualifying.

Tom Kimber-Smith was the first driver out on track and used that advantage to put in a couple of fast laps. On his first timed lap the No. 41 Greaves Motorsport Zytek Nissan already broke the 1:50 barrier and two laps later he had put in his fastest lap of 1:48.950.

Kimber-Smith had only just returned to the pit when fellow Zytek driver Harry Tincknell put in an even faster time in the Jota Sport Zytek No. 38.

Tincknell’s time of 1:47.702 turned out to be the fastest of the qualifying session, as Franck Mailleux, Karun Chandhok and Tristan Gommendy were all unable to beat the No. 38 Zytek’s time.

Mailleux’s fastest time, set two minutes before the end of the session, means the No. 34 Race Performance Oreca 03 Judd will start from second on the grid.

Murphy Prototypes and Greaves Motorsport will line-up on the second row of the grid for the race, later this afternoon.

Pre-qualifying favorite Christian Klien put the Newblood by Morand Racing Morgan in sixth place. The Austrian went off and clipped the barrier on his outlap, but returned to the track with new bodywork several minutes later.

In GTE it was the No. 72 SMP Racing Ferrari 458 Italia of Andrea Bertolini that took pole position. Bertolini’s fastest lap was a second quicker than the GTE cars had done in practice, his team out of reach for his fellow competitors.

Daniel Zampieri’s No. 66 JMW Motorsport Ferrari was second fastest, six-tenths behind Bertolini.

Luca Persiani beat Alessandro Pier Guidi to pole in GTC qualifying. The SMP Racing driver was faster than the Team Ukraine Ferrari, albeit by a mere tenth of a second.

The ELMS 4 Hours of Silverstone will start at 2:30pm local time this afternoon.