Cairoli: Overall Pole for Bronze Cup Entry “Quite Unexpected”

Matteo Cairoli described his overall CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa pole position in a Bronze Cup-class Porsche 911 GT3 R as a “quite unexpected” achievement.

The Italian ace delivered Porsche’s first outright pole at the Belgian enduro by leading Friday’s Superpole shootout held between the 20 fastest cars from qualifying on Thursday.

Rainy conditions in qualifying resulted in several cars from classes outside of the top Pro category, including the No. 20 Huber Motorsport Porsche, making it into the shootout.

From there, it was Cairoli’s task to go up against his professional GT3 racing counterparts considering there was no limitation on which driver from each Bronze Cup crew could participate in Superpole.

“I think it was quite unexpected,” said Cairoli after posting his 2:16.880 lap time.

“Since yesterday we built up a car that was capable of great performance in great conditions. It was dry today so we shored it up.

“It was an 80 percent lap – I made some small mistakes – but luckily it was enough to be on pole today. I am really happy and satisfied [with] the job done by the team.

“We keep on improving every session and is a good signal for tomorrow’s race.”

The seeds for Cairoli’s Superpole effort were sown during Thursday evening’s weather-disrupted qualifying session.

Bronze-rated Antares Au qualified 16th in Qualifying 1, which included none of the Pro cars and ended up being the only dry session out of the four that were held.

Tim Heinemann then led Q2 after starting out on wet weather Pirelli tires before changing to slicks and posting the fastest lap.

Cairoli also topped the fully wet final session to put the No. 20 Porsche in third place overall ahead of Superpole.

“It was a big question mark which were the right tires to use,” said the 2021 Nürburgring 24 winner.

“In my case, I was lucky because it was properly wet, so the idea was to go with the wet tires. For me, the biggest issue was the spray coming from the other cars.

“It’s also very satisfying for yesterday, leading the class in very wet conditions and today we repeated it.

“We are also aiming for an important result overall, but we stay humble that it’s our target to win the Bronze class.

“We will try to give our best. We have a great package [and] together with my teammates we have a good connection together. We should be in a good position to fight tomorrow.”

When informed about being the first Porsche driver to take the outright pole for the 24 Hours of Spa, Cairoli reacted: “I didn’t know this, so it’s great to know.

“I did not expect it, to be honest. The Porsche is really great in wet conditions but is still struggling a bit in the dry. I’m really surprised that we are on pole today.”