Grasser, WRT Share Nürburgring Poles

Photo: Dirk Bogaerts/SRO

Grasser Racing Team and Belgian Audi Club Team WRT will each start one of this weekend’s Blancpain GT World Challenge Europe races at the Nürburgring from pole.

Mirko Bortolotti went quickest in Qualifying 1 to place the No. 63 Grasser Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo on pole for Saturday’s race, while Dries Vanthoor secured Sunday’s Race 2 pole with his No. 1 WRT Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo.

Bortolotti’s best time of 1:54.926 put him 0.161 clear of Black Falcon’s Luca Stolz, who will line up second, while third and fourth went to the Audis of Sainteloc Racing and Attempto Racing, qualified by Simon Gachet and Kelvin van der Linde.

Vanthoor led an Audi 1-2-3 sweep in the second session, logging a pole time of 1:54.439 to beat Christopher Haase, in the same Sainteloc car that will start third in Race 1, to second.

WRT’s No. 2 car will start third with Christopher Mies at the wheel, ahead of Maro Engel, who ensured Black Falcon’s No. 4 Mercedes-AMG GT3 had a strong qualifying result in both sessions.

Engel and Stolz currently lead both the Sprint and combined championship standings, ahead of Andrea Caldarelli and Marco Mapelli on both tables, who will start from sixth and seventh.

Rinaldi Racing is on Pro-Am class pole in both races with its Ferrari 488 GT3 shared by Rinat Salikhov and David Perel, who will start 21st and ninth, respectively.

Silver Cup poles went to Attempto Racing’s Mattia Drudi (fifth for Race 1) and WRT’s Oscar Tunjo (11th for Race 2), while Florian Scholze and Wolfgang Triller scored a double pole for HB Racing in the Am Cup.

Their only other Am rivals, the one-off Kessel Racing entry for Stephen Earle and Rory Pentinnen, failed to set a time in either session after a spin early in Q1 for the Finn.

That brought out the morning’s only red flag, interrupting proceedings for around four minutes.

Race 1 will start at 2:30 p.m. local time (8:30 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.