Aston Martin Racing achieves perfect 1-2 in GTE Pro
Saturday, September 03, 2016
Aston Martin Racing has achieved the perfect qualifying result, after taking first and second on the grid in GTE Pro for tomorrow’s 6 Hours of Mexico.
Following a faultless performance, the Danish duo of Nicki Thiim (DN) and Marco Sørensen (DN) will begin tomorrow’s Mexican round of the FIA World Endurance Championship in pole position with their #95 V8 Vantage GTE. Setting an average lap time of 1m40.458, the pair edged teammates Darren Turner (GB) and Richie Stanaway (NZ) in the sister #97 car by a mere 0.142 seconds, but crucially 0.576 seconds ahead of the nearest competition.
Sørensen commented, “I’m super excited about today’s pole, especially with it being the second of this year. I’m now confident that this is our time to take the top step and here we definitely have a chance of doing that. Now we just wait for the race tomorrow and to do the best we can. It’s important we stay out of trouble and take the opportunities that come our way”.
Thiim added, “I always appreciate coming to a new place, especially when you take pole for the second time in a row. Both Marco and I are working really well together with a good pace, so I hope we can keep it up. It’s quite difficult out there as it seems that the track is changing each session and not always for the better, but the team are in really good shape, so I hope we can take the top step tomorrow”.
Following today’s perfect result in GTE Pro, Team Principal Paul Howarth commented, “That was an unbelievable result for the whole team and our partners. Our relationship with Dunlop has gone from strength to strength and we’ve been exceptionally pleased with how the tyres have performed so far this weekend. For a considerable amount of time now we’ve been focusing on how to maximise our opportunities in Mexico considering it’s a new event. The result of that is the 1-2 in GTE Pro that you see today. Qualifying is an important part of the weekend and our major objective was to achieve pole position. The next is to convert that into the class win.”
The 6 Hours of Mexico begins at 13:30 local time on Saturday 3 September.
Source material - AMR