Winward Mercedes-AMG Grabs Pole for Paul Ricard Opener

A Winward-run Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo grabbed pole for the opening round of the GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS at Paul Ricard for the second consecutive year as Lucas Auer, Luca Stolz and Maro Engel were fractionally faster than their rivals.

Even though Engel was only 11th quickest in the final segment of qualifying, the combined average across the three drivers gave the No. 48 Mercedes-AMG Team Mann-Filter entry a 1:53.622 to narrowly pip the No. 58 Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo to pole.

McLaren entries looked strong across the board in Paul Ricard qualifying and Thomas Fleming, Louis Prette and Benjamin Goethe managed a 1:53.676 on average, meaning the Gold Cup polesitters were just 0.054 seconds away from outright top spot.

Third quickest was the best of the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evos, the No. 7 Comtoyou Racing entry of Mattia Drudi, Marco Sorensen and Nicki Thiim with an average of 1:53.686.

The second of the Garage 59 McLarens was fourth after Joseph Loake, Dean Macdonald and Marvin Kirchhoefer managed an average of 1:53.690.

The No. 80 Lionspeed GP Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo that looked strong in the pre-event Prologue was next quickest with Bastian Buus, Thomas Preining and Ricardo Feller managing a 1:53.712 across their three segments, meaning the top five were all separated by less than a tenth of a second.

Sixth fastest was the next of the Mercedes-AMG entries, the No. 17 GetSpeed crew of Maxime Martin, Maximilian Goetz and Fabian Schiller – with the latter posting the quickest time of qualifying, a 1:53.049 that was a quarter of a second faster than Thiim’s next best effort.

It was a more tricky session for the BMW M4 GT3 EVO squads and reigning champions Kelvin van der Linde and Charles Weerts could only manage 10th in the best of the Bavarian marque’s entries.

Meanwhile, Aston Martin Formula 1 driver Lance Stroll set the 17th fastest time in his segment of qualifying on his GT3 debut, meaning the No. 18 Comtoyou Aston he shares with Roberto Merhi and Mari Boya was 15th quickest overall.

A Comtoyou Aston did set the Silver Cup pace, with Kobe Pauwels – who will make his FIA World Endurance Championship debut next weekend – powering the No. 21 entry also piloted by Oliver Soderstrom and Sebastien Baud to the class pole.

Porsche led the way among the Bronze Cup ranks with the No. 91 Herberth Motorsport machine of Ralf Bohn, Huub van Eijndhoven and Robert Renauer going two tenths faster than the opposition.

The only stoppage of note during qualifying was when red flags were required early into the second segment after the No. 87 Winward Mercedes-AMG of Gabriele Piana stopped on track with a suspected loose wheel nut.

Only 58 cars took part in the session after the No. 34 Walkenhorst Aston was forced to withdraw from the season-opening event following a sizeable crash for Jamie Day on the second morning of the Prologue.

The six-hour Endurance Cup season opener is due to get under way at 6:00 p.m. local time (12:00 p.m. EST) and can be watched on SRO’s GT World YouTube channel.

RESULTS: Qualifying