Rossi Makes It Five With Spa-Francorchamps Pole

Matteo Rossi would take his second pole position in a row, and fifth for the season, in the qualifying session for the GT Super Series Round of Belgium.

Rossi’s first lap of the session would be enough to put his Gulf Racing Aston Martin on pole position, with the only lap all weekend to break into two minute, eight second barrier. Laps completed after would still have been enough to retain pole position with Evgeny Restov’s best time two tenths behind in his Ferrari 550. Matteo ties the mark for the most poles in a season at five, shared by Ricardo Llosa and Frank Zimmer, but with three races remaining in the season to take the record for his own.

On the second row is the second factory Ferrari of Denis Van Walwijk and second place in the championship Fabian Rei. The South African was half a second behind the time set by Rossi and with Rei being a further two tenths back. Championship leader Chris Winter was another two tenths behind Rei, and the last car to be within one second of the pole time. Starting alongside the American on the the third row is the pole sitter in the Independent Class in James Douglas.

Behind Winter and Douglas was a extremely tight qualifying battle, with the next eighteen cars within one second of each other. Between Douglas and the next highest Independent qualifier, Darren Older Jr., were three factory entries that were separated by half a tenth of a second. Further down the field, Sam Winton and John Magnus are separated by two thousandths of a second, with Winton putting in the quicker time which will see him start seventeenth. Behind them, Harry Wilkinson and Daniel Einfeldt put in identical times in the session, with the LKM driver putting in the time first resulting in him starting higher in the starting order for Sunday’s race.

Everyone got in their fastest times early in the session before a torrential rain shower started with five minutes left in the twenty minute session. A few cars elected to do a exploratory lap on the wet compound tire to gather data with some forecasts predicting some rain for the race.

Qualifying Results – Round of Belgium