Weerts Retakes Sprint Points Lead with Misano Race 1 Pole

Audi driver Charles Weerts claimed pole position for the first race of the weekend at Misano and retook the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Sprint Cup points lead for himself and Dries Vanthoor in the process.

Weerts and his Team WRT co-driver Vanthoor arrived in Italy with a half-point deficit to Emil Frey Racing’s Ricardo Feller, but overturned that when the 20-year-old Belgian earned a single-point score for topping Saturday morning’s qualifying session.

A time of 1:32.333 was enough for Weerts to clinch pole by 0.018 seconds from Leo Roussel in the No. 25 Sainteloc RacingAudi R8 LMS GT3 Evo.

Albert Costa qualified third in the No. 163 Emil Frey Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo with a time of 1:32.384.

Ulysse de Pauw captured the Silver Cup class pole by placing fourth overall behind the wheel of CMR’s No. 107 Bentley Continental GT3.

The Belgian teenager produced a 1:32.393 flying lap, fitting the top four drivers within a tenth of each other.

Aurelien Panis was third in the No. 26 Sainteloc Audi, followed by Jim Pla in AKKA-ASP’s Silver Cup Mercedeses-AMG GT3 Evo.

Pla led a quintet of Mercedes-AMGs, including the Pro-category cars driven by Luca Stolz of Toksport WRT and Timur Boguslavskiy of AKKA-ASP.

Silver Cup AMG drivers Rik Breukers and Oscar Tunjo rounded out of the top ten, while just outside was Silver Cup points leader Alex Fontana who is the co-driver to former outright championship leader Feller in the No. 14 Lamborghini.

Feller moved into the points lead last time out at Zandvoort when he and Fontana won the opening race before taking second in race two.

Louis Machiels earned the Pro-Am pole for AF Corse with a 1:33.994 effort aboard the No. 52 Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020.

Saturday’s 60-minute race gets underway at 3 p.m. CEST (9 a.m. EST).

RESULTS: Qualifying 1