The excitement is certainly building at the Circuit de La Sarthe at Le Mans where the capacity sixty-two multi-class grid have just battled out the hour-long Qualifying session that see’s both Aston Martin Racing Vantage LMGT3 crews move up to the later Hyperpole session.

Having started formal track proceedings earlier today with the first Free Practice session this afternoon which saw both the #27 Heart of Racing and #777 D’Station Racing teams take to the track for the first time since Sunday’s Test Day.

 

With the Hyperpole, the final part of the Le Mans 24 Hour Qualifying process now completed, the grid for Saturday’s start to the centennial edition of this great event has now been set.

With the top eight cars of each three classes moving up from yesterday’s Qualifying session into this afternoon’s half hour long Hyperpole session, top honours finally went to the #25 ORT with TF Sport car of Ahmad Al Harthy who eventually claimed a GTE Am class from row start beside the pole setting Corvette of last season’s AMR powered Champion Ben Keating.

After the fun and frivolity of yesterdays cruise down to Spa Francorchamps town for the events now customary meet and greet session between the teams, drivers and race fans it was back to business today with the start of the events formal qualifying process.

Having had was something of a bruising start for the #97 Oman Racing with TF Sport Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT3 earlier today in Free Practice , the Qualifying sessions have just been completed this evening to determine three quarters of the positions for the start of Saturdays race and that has seen all six cars form the AMR stable in good position in their respective classes.


With Qualifying again being staged over one Qualifying session per driver per car, all three Pro class cars have made it through to tomorrows Super Pole shoot out with the remaining three cars all being in the top four in the Pro-Am, Silver Cup and Am classes out of the remaining 72 entries.

Q1 and Q2 were both red flagged interrupted by incident involving other cars on track - all fortunately not injuring significant damage to their vehicles but enough to delay the proceedings by nearly half an hour by the time Q4 had finished.


With Spa also experiencing very high track and air temperatures this week, thunderstorms are being predicted for some stage of the event with possible rain even arriving during the night practice that is now taking place.

Salih Yoluc unfortunately had an 'off' in the #97 car which caused sizeable front end damage to the car that appears to be running absolutely fine at the moment after Charlie Eastwood and Nicki Thiim both posted times to raise the cars position up to P4 in Pro-Am.


Ross Gunn is clearly looking forward to his 2019 excursion into the event, this time in the #188 Am Class Garage 59 car as he posted the second quickest time in the class to elevate that car also up to P4 in class.

The Silver Cup entered #762 R-Motorsport car of Ricky Collard, Hugo de Sadeleer, Aaro Vainio and Ferdinand Habsburg completed their Qualifying process to finish P30 overall and P3 in class.


That leaves the Pro entered #59 Garage 59 car of Jonny Adam, Andrew Watson and Come Ledogar and both #62 and #76 R-Motorsport cars of Maxime Martin, Matt Parry and Matthieu Vaxivierre with Marvin Kirchhofer, Jake Dennis and Alex Lynn to tough it out in tomorrows Superpole to determine the position of the top twenty starters.

Is this the year for Aston Martin Racing?

Photo credits - R-Motorsport / TF Sport

Come rain or shine, the British GT Championship is never a dull place to be at and with todays incessant rainfall, that just adding to the excitement.

Thinking of all the testing, practicing and racing has so far been completed in 2018 by the teams in this championship a large percentage of that has been on a wet track so not many of them have really experienced what the new Pirelli slick tyre can offer - certainly not under full race conditions at least.


This morning's first Free Practice was very wet, with the constant rainfall continually subtracting grip from a circuit already renowned for offering little grip, making the drivers experiment with differing lines just to stay on the track.

Both the TF Sport V12 Vantage GT3's were the leading #TeamAMR cars finishing third and fourth for Mark Farmer/Marco Sorensen and Derek Johnston/Nicki Thiin respectively by the end of FP1 with the Jetstream car finishing the session in P6, Optimum P10 and Beechdean finishing just behind the leading AMR Vantage GT4 in P16 - but it was simple free practice!


Issues arose for Graham Davidson and Maxime Martin in their #47 car after prolonged snaps of understeer/oversteer caused him to brush the outside wall, no obvious damage but the team would need to sit out FP2 replacing the clutch hopefully in time for Qualifying.


Still very wet, FP2 was a much better affair for all of the Aston Martin Racing runners (except the #47 of course) with Optimum's Jonny Adam piling in a quick time to finish top of the pile again (just like at Oulton Park), the two TF Sport cars consistent in P2 and P3 and with the #99 Beechdean AMR up to P6. In GT4 Will Moore/Matt Nichol-Jones' Academy car finished the session P4 in class whilst their younger guns in the #61 car would end fourth from bottom.


This afternoon came the the four qualifying runs for the respective Pro and Am drivers in both GT3 and GT4 classes and with Jon Minshaws Lamborghini again on a charge it looked as though the Am side of the grid would take a familiar path - or at least until Flick Haigh saved her best lap till last!
Taking almost a second off Minshaw, Haigh claimed her second consecutive 'pole' although in this single race event it would be the aggregate time of both drivers that would decide Sundays running order so not quite a prize but still a job well done.

With Adam just missing out on the GT3 fastest lap by about half a second to Phil Keen, the #75 Optimum car will still be starting on the front row but will have the championship leading #33 Lamborghini just ahead - what a drag race into the first hairpin tomorrow will be with the #11 TF Sport car right behind (or infront)!!


The GT4 Qualifying was interrupted with red flags for stranded cars on track, but allowed the #62 Academy car of Moore/Nichol-Jone stop secure P6 in class albeit a whopping 4.5 seconds down to the pole setting McLaren 570S. The other Academy car of Tom Wood and Jan Jonck would continue to struggle, as had been their problem all day finishing their days work in P20.


Tomorrow sees the traditional Sunday morning warm up at 09:30 before the start of the two hour endurance race at 13:10. Again, the race will be streamed live via the SRO's social media channels.

Photo credits - Jacob Ebrey / Optimum / Beechdean / Academy