© DPPI
Despite some rain before the qualifying session and clouded skies the GT2 and GT1 teams qualified on a dry track. At the end of the session Vitaphone Racing Team and Trackspeed Racing were on top of the time sheets, taking pole positions for tomorrow’s race.
Matias Russo was the first driver to set a quick time in his PeCom Racing Ferrari F430, setting a 1:30.326 in his second fast lap. But with 10 minutes to go he was just one of three drivers that had been out. Russo improved his time to 1:29.836 but was immediately passed by Ragginger’s Brixia Racing Porsche setting a 1:28.803. Ragginger then got it wrong on his next flying lap and went off track with all four wheels.
With five minutes left on the clock and all the big guns out on the track it was Jörg Bergmeister who beat Ragginger’s time setting 1:28.606. Gianmaria Bruni was unable to beat the two Porsches and set the third fastest time. When the chequered flag came out Marco Holzer had moved into fourth place at half a second from Bergmeister, making it a Porsche 1-2-4 on the grid.
The first five minutes of the GT1 qualifying session were quiet with only the SRT Corvette of Bert Longin doing his laps, but then all the other cars came out and soon after the Vitaphone Racing Team cars had moved into first and second place. Alex Müller was quickest in 1:24.546.
With six minutes left on the clock KplusK Motorsport’s Adam Lacko got into second place, but less than a minute later team mate Karl Wendlinger had already gone by into second place, at three tenths of a second from Müller, while Xavier Maassen in the Luc Alphand Corvette C6.R moved into third.
In the battle for the best of the 2010-spec cars it was the Ford GT driven by Bas Leinders who was quickest, 1.3s quicker than the Nissan GT-R of Michael Krumm.
With Corvette racing ou tof GT1 they need to start giving customer teams developmental pieces to upgrade their performance. They no longer have to worry about a GT1 customer team beating them.
The only major GT championship Corvette doesn’t hav is the FIA’s they sould support those teams to get that prize.