Ben Green secured his second ROWE Pole Award of the season in today’s qualifying for the Fanatec GT Europe in Magny-Cours, giving Emil Frey Racing a fantastic chance of two Sprint Cup victories in a row.
The 10-minute session will set the starting grid for today’s opening race, which gets underway just before sunset at 20:15 CEST. Green will start at the front of the field after setting a time of 1m36.701s in the No.14 Ferrari.
Dan Harper starts second overall in the No. 991 Century Motorsport BMW – 0.090 seconds behind Green – and has also led the Bronze Cup. Sven Müller underlined Rutronik Racing’s good form by qualifying third in the No. 96 Porsche (+0.127 seconds), while Christopher Haase gave Eastalent Racing a dream Sprint Cup debut by finishing fourth in the No. 84 Audi (+0.153 seconds).
Dennis Marschall finished fifth overall in the No. 97 Rutronik Racing Porsche, which means tough competition for the No. 991 BMW in the Bronze Cup. The championship-leading No. 32 Team WRT BMW of Dries Vanthoor finished sixth and will be hoping for at least a podium finish in today’s race.
Another Bronze Cup car finished seventh – Sandy Mitchell in the No. 78 Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini – followed by the No. 6 Liqui-Moly Team Engstler by OneGroup Audi, which secured the Gold Cup pole thanks to Luca Engstler. The No. 66 Tresor Attempto Racing Audi and the No. 69 Emil Frey Racing Ferrari rounded out the top 10, while the No. 48 Mercedes-AMG Team Mann-Filter machine only managed 11th.
Madpanda Motorsport took pole position in the Silver Cup. Ezequiel Perez Companc drove the Mercedes-AMG No. 90 with a time of 1:37.453 minutes, beating the Ferrari No. 71 from AF Corse by six hundredths and three starting positions. There was less joy for the class leader, as the BMW No. 30 from Team WRT fought its way to 28th place overall.
The session began with problems for Garage 59, whose #159 McLaren stalled shortly after leaving the pit lane due to a fuel pressure issue. The red flag was shown, after which the car was restarted and Benjamin Goethe returned to the pits. The German driver ultimately qualified 18th overall for that evening’s race.
The opening competition of the weekend starts at 20:15 and will be streamed live on the GT World YouTube channel. Green and his Emil Frey Racing teammate Konsta Lappalainen will be hoping for a second consecutive victory after winning the Sprint Cup race at Hockenheim last month, a breakthrough victory that raised hopes of a championship challenge.
> RESULTS: Qualifying 1, Magny-Cours 2024
