Heinrich Puts Huber Porsche on Indianapolis 8H Pole

Laurin Heinrich beat Mercedes-AMG drivers Jules Gounon and Luca Stolz to put Huber Motorsport’s Pro-Am Porsche 911 GT3 R on the overall pole for the Indianapolis 8 Hour presented by AWS.

It marked the German team’s second pole of the Intercontinental GT Challenge powered by Pirelli season after Matteo Cairoli led the shootout for the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa.

Heinrich produced a time of 1:22.707 to lead the 15-minute final qualifying session that was held between the 10 fastest cars from Friday afternoon’s three-part qualifying.

The German DTM driver beat Gounon and Stolz to the top spot in a back-and-forth decider that saw multiple drivers take turns to hold the provisional pole.

Heinrich, who shares the No. 20 Porsche with Alfred Renauer and Antares Au, went quickest with five minutes remaining but Gounon bested him by a tenth of a second.

However, a further improvement from Heinrich with three and a half minutes to go cemented the final result and denied Gounon a second straight Indy 8H pole.

The result marked another major qualifying scalp for the Huber team, which took a surprise pole at Spa after changeable conditions caused several Bronze Cup teams to make the shootout.

Heinrich, Renauer and Au set the seventh-fastest average in a dry three-part qualifying at Indianapolis to tee up another front-row start.

Stolz qualified third overall for Mercedes-AMG Team GruppeM Racing on a time of 1:22.908, finishing ahead of three BMW M4 GT3s.

Team WRT’s Philipp Eng ranked fourth, while Robby Foley split the WRT cars for BimmerWorld which was the highest-placed Fanatec GT World Challenge America squad.

Augusto Farfus was sixth in the other WRT BMW, ahead of Wright Motorsports Porsche driver Jan Heylen and Klaus Bachler in RS1 Racing’s Fanatec GT-leading Porsche.

The top 10 was completed by the other two Pro-Am entries that made the shootout.

Eddie Cheever came through in ninth behind the wheel of the Sky-Tempesta Racing Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020, beating Samantha Tan in the ST Racing BMW.

RESULTS: Pole Shootout