Pole position for the opening round of the 2020 European Le Mans Series went to the #22 United Autosports ORECA 07 piloted by Filipe Albuquerque in the car he shares with Phil Hanson. Lining up alongside the #22 car will be the #26 G-Drive Racing Auris 01 in which Nyck De Vries lapped in 1:38.505.
Completing the overall top three was the sister United Autosports entry, the #32, in which Alex Brundle put in a 1:38.736.
No sooner had the LMP3 session got underway than the #7 Nielsen Racing entry driven by Colin Noble stopped on the circuit at Turn 3. Noble got the Duqueine M30 underway and the session continued.
At the half-way point, Laurents Horr in the #4 DKR Engineering Duqueine M30-D08 topped the time-sheets with a 1:48.994 and immediately improved to 1:48.399. As the session drew to a close and with a yellow flag out, it was Wayne Boyd on the class pole with a 1:48.315. The #4 DKR Engineering entry was second quickest and the #15 RLR MSport Ligier JS P320, driven by Malthe Jacobsen, was third.
“Wayne did a fantastic job,” said United Autosports teammate Tom Gamble. “We’ve shown really good pace in testing and we just needed to deliver in qualifying. He did a superb job so it’s made my job a lot easier for tomorrow so I’m really happy with that!”.
Pole position in the LM GTE category went to the #74 Kessel Racing Ferrari F488 GTE in which Nicola Cadei lapped in 1:51.729 with seconds remaining in the 10-minute session. Second quickest, with a 1:51.745, was the #98 Aston Martin Racing Vantage AMR driven by Ross Gunn.
Completing the top three in the category was the #55 Spirit of Race Ferrari of Aaron Scott, Duncan Cameron and, on qualifying duty, Matt Griffin who put in a 1:51.780.
Kessel Racing teammate David Perel was delighted at the pole position.
“It was an incredible job by Nicky@ said Perel. “He actually got a track limits (penalty) on the first run which put us under huge pressure but to pull out a lap – it was so close at the end! Yesterday we were struggling a bit but it was so impressive by Nicky.”
