Porsche Penske Motorsport’s No. 5 963 will start tomorrow’s FIA World Endurance Championship season opener in Qatar from pole position, after Matt Campbell set a rapid 1m39.347s in the debut of the revised 2024 Hyperpole qualifying format.
For Campbell, who has transitioned from Penske’s Hypercar team from IMSA GTP this season, it was a battle. His flyer came at the end of the 10-minute Hypercar class shootout, after trading fast times with the No. 7 Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010 HYBRID of Nyck de Vries in the closing minutes.
De Vries came close to a shock pole for Toyota, with a 1m39.511s on his penultimate tour of the circuit that initially put the No. 7 at the top of the timing screens. But Campbell found that little bit extra and delivered the first Hypercar pole for Porsche and an LMDh chassis.
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While the TGR team will likely be disappointed that it missed out on pole by such a slim margin, this was a promising flash of pace from the Japanese marque, which believed it would struggle for pace prior to the session.
“It’s fantastic to get our first pole with the 963. We’ve made some really good tuning before qualifying and it’s paid off. I struggled in my qualifying simulation yesterday but we turned it around,” Campbell said.
Off the front row, the No. 12 Hertz Team JOTA Porsche will start third after Callum Illot’s 1m39.622s, which ensured he was one of the five drivers to set a time under 1m40s.
“It’s fantastic to see that the LMDh platform can compete with Hypercar. It’s a big day for the team and our WEC program,” Jonathan Diuguid, the managing director of Team Penske, told RACER.
The fastest of the two Ferrari AF Corse 499Ps — the No. 50 — ended up fourth, while the sister Penske 963 claimed fifth spot on the grid.
Further back, the Cadillac which topped Free Practice 3 slotted in seventh, and the two Peugeot 9X8s qualified well for the final race of the current iteration of the car, finishing up sixth and 10th.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, none of the brand-new LMDh chassis to the WEC, nor the Isotta Fraschini Tipo6-C, made the Hyperpole shootout. The biggest surprise was that the No. 8 Toyota GR010 HYBRID of Brendon Hartley didn’t either, it will start 11th after a 1m40.586s was all the Kiwi could muster.
The first session for Hypercar saw the top 17 set times within two seconds of the No. 5 Porsche which topped the times. The Lamborghini Iron Lynx SC63 ended up 2.5s off in 18th ahead of the Isotta which was 19th with a 1m43.189s.
Before Hypercar Hyperpole, Tom Van Rompuy stole the show in the GT ranks, setting an astonishing 1m54.372s time in the No. 81 TF Sport Corvette Z06 LMGT3.R to take the first-ever pole in LMGT3 class history by eight-tenths.
“It’s a good thing this is on the screens because I otherwise I wouldn’t believe it!” enthused Van Rompuy. “It’s my first qualifying session in WEC. We’ve worked really hard this week to improve the car and improve ourselves. The team did a mega job, as did the guys at Corvette and Pratt Miller. In the end, we made it all work so this is a team effort. I could put a really good lap together, and I’m really amazed with this result. “That’s what everyone wants from qualifying — drivers pushing flat out for pole.”
It was a hugely impressive showing in Hyperpole from the Belgian driver in what is a very new car, scoring its first pole position globally. His fast time came with two minutes remaining and although the other contenders in the session had time to respond, there were no significant improvements in the final seconds.
Lithuanian team Pure Rxcing’s Manthey Porsche 911 LMGT3 R 992 will start alongside the brand-new Corvette after Alex Malykhin set a 1m55.179s in the team’s first WEC qualifying appearance.
One of the two Vista AF Corse Ferrari 296 LMGT3s ended up taking third after an impressive run from Thomas Flohr. His time was just 0.003s off Malykhin in the No. 54, which has looked fast all week.
The top five was completed by the two new Aston Martin Vantage LMGT3s, with the D’Station example set to start fourth ahead of the car fielded by U.S. team Heart of Racing.
Prior to the shootout, Heart of Racing’s Aston topped qualifying, with a 1m55.251s from Ian James in the final moments of the first 12-minute qualifying session to decide which teams made the cut for LMGT3 Hyperpole.
Of the teams that failed to make it to phase two, TF Sport’s No. 82 Corvette Z06 LMGT3.R came closest and ended up missing out by two-tenths. Hiroshi Koizumi will start 11th tomorrow.
Both AKKODIS ASP Lexus RC F GT3s and Proton Ford Mustangs (the No. 77 didn’t make it out) also failed to break into the top 10.
Another notable omission was WRT’s No. 31 M4 GT3. It will start 13th in class after Darren Leung’s efforts, while the sister No. 46 will line up ninth.
The Qatar 1812Km race is set to get underway at 11:00am local time.