Qualifying report
European Le Mans Imola
Imola ELMS: Lapierre beats Beche by 0.035s to take pole
The #21 Dragon Speed entry of Nicolas Lapierre took pole position for the 4 Hours of Imola, pipping Mathias Beche (#46 Thiret by TDS) by just 0.035 seconds in an ultra tight qualifying session.
Rachit Thukral
Edited: May 14, 2016, 2:04 PM
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Lapierre held pole provisional pole for much of the session with his early benchmark, before improving to 1m33.780s to seal the top spot on the grid.
Beche, who took pole position in Silverstone, was involved in a clumsy incident with the #34 Race Performance but managed to qualify on the front row, thanks to his early effort of 1m33.815.
Paul Loup Chatin set an identical time to Beche’s but would start from third place, ahead of Olivier Pla in the #40 Krohn Racing. The top four drivers were separated by just 0.044s in qualifying.
Behind the front runners, the Silverstone-winning G-Drive squad took fifth position, with EurAsia Motorsport’s Tristan Gommendy qualifying only half a hundredth adrift in sixth place.
The #41 Greaves Motorsport was seventh ahead of the leading Judd-powered Oreca of SO24 ! By Lombard Racing. Pegasus Racing and Algarve Motorsport completed the top 10.
United Sports, Proton take class pole
In the LMP3 class, Wayne Boyd delivered pole position for the #3 United Autosports, with Giorgio Mondini (#11 EuroInternational) jumping to second position with a last gasp attempt in qualifying.
Mondini’s efforts demoted Alex Brundle to third place, preventing a United Autosports front row lockout.
Murphy’s Alex Kapadia caused a scare when his Ginetta lost one of its four wheels, nearly hitting one of the Oak Racing cars. Kapadia managed to return to track but could qualify no higher than 40th.
Meanwhile, #77 Proton Competition took the GTE honours, with Wolf Henzler displacing Andrea Bertolini’s #66 JMW Motorsport entry by just 0.041s to take class pole.
The sister Proton Competition car of Gianluca Roda, Klaus Bachler and Christian Ried qualified in third place, ahead of a trio of Ferraris and the #99 Aston Martin.
Qualifying results - Top 10:
Pos **#**Driver Car/Engine Time/Delay 1 21 
Henrik Hedman
Nicolas Lapierre
Benjamin Hanley ORECA/Nissan 1'33.780 2 46 Pierre Thiriet
Mathias Beche
Ryo Hirakawa ORECA/Nissan 0.035 3 23 Fabien Barthez
Timothé Buret
Paul-Loup Chatin Ligier/Nissan 0.035 4 40 Björn Wirdheim
Nic Jönsson
Olivier Pla Ligier/Nissan 0.044 5 38 Simon Dolan
Harry Tincknell
Giedo van der Garde Gibson/Nissan 0.244 6 33 
Pu Jun Jin
Nick de Bruijn
Tristan Gommendy ORECA/Nissan 0.290 7 41 
Memo Rojas
Julien Canal
Kuba Giermaziak Ligier/Nissan 0.356 8 22 Vincent Capillaire
Olivier Lombard
Jonathan Coleman Ligier/Judd 0.902 9 29 Inès Taittinger
Remy Striebig
Leo Roussel Morgan/Nissan 1.234 10 25 Michael Munemann
Chris Hoy
Parth Ghorpade Ligier/Nissan 1.288
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