Sorensen “Can’t Complain” After Missing Out on Fuji Pole

Marco Sorensen said he “can’t complain” about missing out on pole position in the 6 Hours of Fuji after the Aston Martin Valkyrie secured a top-three qualifying position in the FIA World Endurance Championship for the first time.

The Dane steered the No. 009 car, which he shares with Alex Riberas, to third behind the pair of Hertz Team JOTA Cadillac V-Series.Rs during Saturday’s Hyperpole session.

That came after Sorensen managed to top the initial qualifying session aboard the V12-powered Hypercar as part of a strong weekend that previously saw Harry Tincknell lead Free Practice 3 aboard the sister car.

Speaking afterwards, Sorensen admitted he was left with a little bit of a ‘one that got away’ feeling qualifying third, but added that that should not overshadow the significance of the result for a program still in its first year.

“Obviously for me, yes I feel that, because I wanted the pole,” said Sorensen.

“But as a team we can’t look at it like that, because actually if you look at where we’ve come from, everyone has done a absolutely fantastic job.

“We can’t complain about where we are right now and again we’re in the mix. It’s a six-hour race, so if you [told] me before the weekend if there were going to be third in Hyperpole, not many would have believed it.

“I think there are some people in the team that lost a payment for the dinner tonight. So that’s a good thing.”

Sorensen’s Hyperpole performance follows just a few weeks after a strong showing at COTA went unrewarded for both Valkyries due to a double retirement.

The 35-year-old said he was “super proud” of the progress the program has showed since its Qatar debut, remarking that the second of the season has brought significant steps forward.

“If you look at where we’ve come from since Qatar, obviously I would like to have pole today,” said Sorensen.

“That’s the first thing. But I’m still super proud of what the team have managed to do since Qatar. Because obviously we’ve just been moving closer and closer.

“We’ve had some setbacks. We’ve gone closer again. And I would say probably the first time where we started feeling, ‘Okay, we might be getting a little bit closer’ was Sao Paulo.

“Then when we arrived to COTA, the car was already in a better window. We were like, ‘Okay, let’s see. Maybe COTA was a one-off.’

“Then we arrived here and we seem to have all the stuff we’ve been working on in the background starting to be playing in in a good sense.”

Tincknell Anticipating Valkyries to Be “Very Raceable”

Sorensen’s stablemate Harry Tincknell, who missed out on Hyperpole after qualifying 11th, struck a positive figure when asked about Aston Martin’s prospects for Sunday’s six-hour race.

“I think the long pace seems decent and we should be very raceable,” Tincknell told Sportscar365.

“We’ve got high top speed and we’ve got good raceability in the last corner.

“Which I think with the way that the race will go with the traffic, we’re not so much quicker than the GT cars in the last sector.

“So if it sort of concertinas up a bit I think it will leave the others more vulnerable down the straight and we look very strong in straight lines, so that’s definitely positive for us.”

Tincknell fell short of the Hyperpole threshold by just 0.032 seconds, explaining that an error in Turn 4 was mostly to blame.

“I had a call on the radio in Turn 4, ran a bit wide, but sort of wasn’t expecting it,” Tincknell said.

“That was the first one, and then I did a cooldown.

“I had time for one more, so I did a lap and a half to cool the tire as much as possible and just missed out by like three hundredths.”

Jamie Klein contributed to this report