Red Bull Ring ELMS: Roussel beats Lapierre by 0.005s to pole
G-Drive Racing's Leo Roussel edged out Nicolas Lapierre by just five thousandths of a second to score pole position for the European Le Mans Series' Red Bull Ring round.
The 10-minute LMP2 qualifying session quickly devolved into a private contest between the two DragonSpeed-run Oreca 07s, with Roussel taking the upper hand initially on a 1m18.520s.
Lapierre had his time of 1m18.875s deleted, but the Signatech Alpine WEC regular retook the top spot with a 1m18.440s soon after.
Roussel came within 0.037s of that time on his next effort, before recording a 1m18.435s to finally end up on top in the #22 car he shares with Nicolas Minassian and Memo Rojas.
The #21 entry of Lapierre, Ben Hanley and Henrik Hedman starts seconds, followed by the top Ligier, Filipe Albuquerque's #32 United Autosports car, four tenths off the pace.
Sometime GP2 and Formula E racer Nathanael Berthon took the #23 Panis-Barthez Ligier to fourth, followed by the best of the Dallaras, the #27 SMP Racing car driven by Formula 3.5 driver Egor Orudzhev.
Norma beats Ligier in LMP3
The LMP3 qualifying session was interrupted by a red flag when Ross Kaiser's #60 360 Racing Ligier JS P3 shed its left-rear wheel.
When proceedings resumed, it was former F3 star Mikkel Jensen in the #9 AT Racing Ligier who set the fastest time of the session, a 1m25.546s, but this was deleted due to a track limits violation.
That meant Duqueine Engineering inherited class pole, David Droux setting a best time of 1m25.657s in the #7 Norma M30, while Jensen's second-best time was good enough for second.
WTCC race winner Yann Ehrlacher was third-fastest in the #19 M.Racing YMR Norma, while Wayne Boyd put the best of the United Autosports Ligiers fourth.
Ferrari 1-2 in GTE
In GTE, pole went to the #51 Spirit of Race Ferrari 488 GTE of Andrea Bertolini, who beat the #55 machine of Matt Griffin by 0.179s.
Matteo Cairoli put the #77 Proton Porsche 911 RSR in third, three tenths slower than Bertolini.
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