Winward Locks Out 6H Abu Dhabi Front Row

Winward Racing secured a front-row lockout for the Michelin 6H Abu Dhabi, but endured a nervy end to qualifying after a red flag in the final segment threatened the Mercedes-AMG team’s superiority.

The pair of Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evos had led the way in practice and also headed the leaderboard after the first two of three 15-minute qualifying sessions with the combined average across each determining the grid.

But the two Winward cars were among the last to head out on track in the final part of qualifying and therefore had not set a lap time when red flags emerged at the mid-point of the session after a bollard needed retrieving from the middle of Turn 5.

That effectively meant just two laps for the Winward entries to return to the top of the table but Marvin Dienst and Maro Engel did not falter under pressure.

Dienst set a 1:49.651 to claim pole for the No. 81 Mercedes-AMG he shares with Gabriele Piana and Rinat Salikhov.

Engel also posted a 1:49.665, which meant the No. 16 – also driven by Daan Arrow and Sergey Stolyarov – finished 0.15 seconds adrift of the sister car.

Had Winward’s drivers not delivered in the closing moments, it would have been the Pro-Am TFT Racing Mercedes-AMG entry of Jordan Boisson, Marvin Klein, Benjamin Paque and Patrick Charlaix that would have profited. Instead, it had to settle for third, just three tenths adrift of pole.

The best non-Mercedes-AMG was the No. 10 Herberth Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R, half a second slower than the average of the pole-sitting crew.

The rest of the top five was completed by the sole BMW – the No. 669 WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO – and the best of the Lamborghinis, the No. 63 Leipert Motorsport Huracan GT3 EVO2.

Earlier, the Ginetta G56 GT2 scored pole for its endurance racing debut with Mike Simpson and Jack Mitchell topping the leaderboard for Team CMR among the GTX class.

The GT4 pace was set by the Cerny Motorsport BMW M4 GT4, which finished some four seconds ahead of its opposition and will be raced by Florian Sternkopf, Ivan Krapivtsev, Joshua Bednarski and Henry Cerny.

Among the 17-strong 992 division, it was the No. 909 Red Camel-Jordans.nl Porsche that led the way – the team having won this race on two previous occasions.

The Michelin 6H Abu Dhabi kicks off Saturday at 3 p.m. local time (6 a.m. ET) with live coverage on the 24H Series YouTube channel.

RESULTS: Qualifying