Feller Grabs Last-Gasp Race 1 Pole Before Red Flag

Ricardo Feller closed the points deficit to Raffaele Marciello and Timur Boguslavskiy with a last-gasp pole position for Race 1 of the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Sprint Cup decider at Zandvoort.

Feller, piloting the No. 40 Tresor Orange 1 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II, put in a lap of 1:32.290 to go quickest mere seconds before a session-ending red flag triggered by GSM driver Paul Meijer.

Just moments after Feller leapfrogged CLRT’s Laurin Heinrich, Meijer brought the session to a premature end when he went off hard aboard the No. 18 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo.

The Dutchman lost control of his car approaching the Scheivlak corner, hitting the inside guardrail before spinning back across the track and coming to a rest in the gravel. Meijer walked away from the crash under his own power.

The session was not resumed after the red flag, meaning Tresor Orange 1 secured its second pole of the season after previously leading qualifying for Race 2 at Hockenheim.

Notably, with the single point on offer for pole position, Feller and co-driver Mattia Drudi close in on the Akkodis ASP pairing of Raffaele Marciello and Timur Boguslavskiy in the drivers’ standings and now sit 6,5 points behind with the first of two races to be contested this afternoon.

Marciello qualified third aboard the No. 88 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, with Andrea Caldarelli fourth behind the wheel of the No. 60 Vincenzo Sospiri Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2.

Dries Vanthoor rounded out the top five for Team WRT, ahead of Comtoyou Racing’s Fred Vervisch and the No. 69 Emil Frey Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 of Albert Costa.

Costa led the session halfway after the first runs were completed, but ultimately filtered down to seventh place ahead of JP Motorsport’s Christian Klien and stablemate Konsta Lappalainen.

Alex Aka completed the top ten and picked up Silver Cup pole in the process aboard the No. 99 Tresor Attempto Racing Audi, with Gold Cup led by the No. 21 Comtoyou Racing machine of Gilles Magnus in 13th overall.

The opening Sprint Cup race of the weekend kicks off at 2 p.m. CEST (8 a.m. EDT), with live coverage on the GT World YouTube channel led by David Addison and John Watson.

RESULTS: Qualifying 1