Heart of Racings best qualifying performance yet within the FIA WEC at CoTA

The Heart of Racing team produced their best collective qualifying performance to date within last night’s FIA World Endurance Championship Hyperpole session as the Circuit of the Americas.

Running again their two full season Aston Martin Valkyrie’s and two Aston Martin Racing Vantage LMGT3’s, their performances within the events earlier Free Practice sessions were at least partly recognised going through the two qualifying rounds for both the #007 and #009 Valkyries whilst both the #23 and #27 AMR Vantage powered crews improved upon their steady progress through Free Practice 1,2 and 3 to look out the front row of the LMGT3 grid.

 

Despite their early pace, it was sadly just the #007 car of Harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble who made it through qualifying and into Hyperpole after the #009 car of Marco Sorensen and Alex Riberas strangely lost over 1.2 seconds of pace between Free Practice and Qualifying. Going into the final top ten shoot out for pole, Tincknell was narrowly edged out of a P3 slot at the death for them to claim a P4 slot for today’s race.

In LMGT3, Gray Newell managed to overcome his persistent breach of track limits during Free Practice to rally to an overall lap time that crept him and his #23 car into the top ten and managed to stay there during the closing minutes of the session to claim his next passage into Hyperpole whilst the #27 car of Ian James, Zacharie Robichoin and Mattia Drudi were more comfortably positioned five places higher up.

 

Into LMGT3 Hyperpole and this time it was the turn of Eduardo Barrichello in the #23 and Robichon within the #27 cars to do their stuff and two quick ‘banker’ laps were all it took for the Brazilian to outgun his Canadian stable mate to claim his second pole position of his FIA WEC career with a lap time just 0.12 of a second quicker to put himself, Newell and birthday boy Jonny Adam at the head of the pack.

Obviously, a single lap pace of qualifying compared to another arduous six-hour race around CoTA are two different things for all concerned.

Photo credits – DPPI