Keating on Quali Tire Choice: “Position is So Important Here”

Ben Keating said that Corvette Racing opted for softer tires in qualifying to start the 6 Hours of Portimao from the front of the GTE-Am grid because track position “is so important” at the Portuguese circuit.

Reigning GTE-Am champion Keating claimed pole for the second round of the FIA World Endurance Championship season after beating Iron Dames Porsche driver Sarah Bovy in Saturday’s 15-minute qualifying session.

The Texan was running on Michelin’s soft-hot GTE-Am tire specification while the No. 85 Porsche 911 RSR-19 and several other cars had the harder medium option fitted.

Keating claimed pole after managing to negate the 30 kg of success ballast that his No. 33 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R is carrying at Portimao after it won the 1000 Miles of Sebring season-opener and opened an early championship lead.

“That was our decision to go with the soft tires just because position is so important here,” he said.

“I have found that I may be half a second quicker than the car in front of me, but I can’t get around them.

“I also think that track limits – they’ve changed the rules for track limit violations for this event compared to what we have had previously. I believe that track limit penalties are going to play a big role in the race.

“It’s really difficult in the GTE car to follow another and not get track limits in Turn 1 or Turn 4 especially, so starting up front is going to be a big advantage by just being able to manage your own track limits and being able to control your own race.”

The track limits rule change that Keating referred to is an adjustment in how breaches are tallied up.

Rather than being reset at the end of each driver’s stint, the tally is accrued over the course of a driver’s entire race time.

Keating suggested that tire wear will be a challenge during the race after Corvette Racing used up a softer set of Michelins in qualifying.

“It’s going to be a big job of managing tire wear,” he said.

“We made the gamble of qualifying on soft tires, which we can’t race on. It’s nice to have that extra little bit of grip when you’re doing a 15-minute session for a qualifying lap.

“It was an exciting qualifying for me as well. I went across and thought what I did was about as good a lap as I could do. It was on the pole. I decided to do a cooldown lap because my tires had gotten hot.

“Then I think [Diego] Alessi in the Ferrari got in front of me and maybe Sarah also. I knew I had to do another big lap and it was just an incredible feeling to put it all together after letting my tires cool down and be able to put in another great lap.”

Bovy was unconcerned about missing out on the GTE-Am pole aboard the Proton Competition-assisted Iron Dames Porsche that she shares with Michelle Gatting and Rahel Frey.

“We know that Ben is extremely fast and at the end, I was happy with the performance I put together in quali,” said the Belgian driver.

“The target was to get on the front row. We clearly spent more time preparing the race than quali, so I think we have a very good package.”

Davey Euwema contributed to this report