In Portugal Saturday afternoon (Oct. 27), Duqueine Engineering’s Nicolas Jamin turned in a lap in the closing moments of qualifying at 111.673 mph in his ORECA 07-Gibson. That time held up to give both Jamin and Duqueine Engineering their first-ever overall pole in the European Le Mans Series for Sunday’s 4 Hours of Portimão.
Jamin’s time was six-hundredths of a second faster than Panis Barthez Competition’s Will Stevens in a Ligier JS P217-Gibson. IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship regular Filipe Albuquerque qualified third in his Ligier for United Autosports, followed by IDEC Sport’s Paul-Loup Chatin. 2018 ELMS LMP2 champion Jean-Eric Vergne qualified the G-Drive Racing No. 26 in fifth.
In LMP3, M. Racing – YMR’s Lucas Légeret set a good lap at 103.337 mph roughly halfway through the session in his Norma M30. Shortly afterwards, Eurointernational’s Giorgio Mondini spun and got stuck in the gravel trap in Turn 5, which brought out the red flag.
The session resumed with three minutes and 21 seconds left. Teams attempted to chase down Légeret’s time, but were unable to prevent the young Swiss racer from taking the LMP3 pole.
Légeret’s lap was six-hundredths of a second faster than the similar Norma M30 driven by Ultimate’s Matthieu Lahaye. The session was not trouble-free for Lahaye as he spun his white and red Norma exiting Turn 5 immediately after setting his best time. The No. 17 Norma was undamaged in the incident.
AT Racing’s Mikkel Jensen was the fastest in the Ligier JS P3s in third, followed by DKR Engineering’s Marvin Klein. United Autosports’ Scott Andrews qualified fifth.
Finally, JMW Motorsport’s Miguel Molina found the proper pace in his Ferrari 488 GTE to set a lap at 101.276 mph right at the end of the session to claim the GTE pole. Molina’s lap was three-tenths of a second faster than Proton Competition’s Dennis Olsen. Teammate Matteo Cairoli turned a lap as fast as Molina early in the session, but it was deleted due to a violation of track limits. Cairoli’s second best lap was good enough for third in class.
EUROPEAN LE MANS SERIES 4 HOURS OF PORTIMÃO QUALIFYING RESULTS
The 4 Hours of Portimão is scheduled to go green at 8:30 a.m. EDT Sunday morning. Normally, Portugal is five hours ahead of the Eastern Time Zone in the United States, but Daylight Savings Time ends tonight in Western Europe. As a result, there is a week in which places in the Western European Time Zone that observe Daylight Savings Time (all of it except Iceland) will only be four hours ahead. The race will be streamed live on EuropeanLeMansSeries.com, the ELMS YouTube channel, and for subscribers of Motor Trend OnDemand.
About the author
Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.
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