Weerts, Marciello Score Misano Poles

Photo: Patrick Hecq/SRO

Charles Weerts and Raffaele Marciello will each start one of this weekend’s Blancpain GT World Challenge Europe races at Misano on pole after going quickest in Saturday afternoon’s qualifying sessions.

Weerts put his No. 2 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo on pole for this evening’s opening race with a best time of 1:34.227, going 0.120 seconds clear at the head of the field.

He’s sharing the Belgian Audi Club Team WRT entry with a new teammate this weekend, Dries Vanthoor, who qualifying second in his session for Race 2. 

A late flyer from Vanthoor wasn’t enough top topple Marciello, whose No. 88 AKKA ASP Mercedes-AMG GT3 went 0.145 seconds quicker in qualifying for Sunday afternoon’s race.

Ricky Collard qualified second for Race 1 after a surprisingly good performance from R-Motorsport, while the second row of the grid will be occupied by the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evos of Andrea Caldarelli and Christian Engelhart.

Vincent Abril will start from fifth in the same car that Marciello scored pole in his session.

In Race 2 qualifying, Christopher Haase went third quickest ahead of Fabian Schiller, who also scored Silver Cup class pole.

Points leaders Luca Stolz and Maro Engel had a disappointing performance, qualifying sixth and 11th in their Black Falcon Mercedes.

Nico Bastian secured Silver Cup pole for Race 1 from seventh, with Nyls Stievenart and Florian Scholze on top in Pro-Am and Am for Sainteloc Racing and HB Racing.

AKKA ASP’s Jim Pla will start from Pro-Am pole in Race 2, while Scholze’s co-driver Wolfgang Triller kept the HB Ferrari 488 GT3 on top in Am.

Qualifying only had one interruption, a four-minute red flag period called when Taylor Proto spun his Orange 1 FFF Racing Team Lamborghini into the gravel early in Q1.

Race 1 will get underway at 7:45 p.m. local time (1:45 p.m. EDT) with Race 2 scheduled for Sunday at 2 p.m. (8 a.m. EDT).

RESULTS: Qualifying 1
RESULTS: Qualifying 2

Jake Kilshaw

Jake Kilshaw is a UK-based journalist. He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations.