The Strata 21/Neil Garner Motorsport Mosler will start from pole for the two hour race (Photo Credit: Chris Gurton Photogrpahy)
Javier Morcillo held off Andy Schulz and the Rapier duo of Mike Millard and Ian Heward to take pole position for the Britcar MSA British Endurance Championship (BEC) at Brands Hatch.
The Spaniard, sharing the Neil Garner Motorsport/Strata 21 Molser with Paul White for the weekend, took pole position roughly half way through the 45 minute qualifying session with a lap of 46.171 seconds around the tight Brands Hatch Indy circuit.
That gave the pairing pole position into the second half of the session, after a red flag interruption for the no.99 Class Four Chevron stopped on the exit of Graham Hill Bend. The session restarted without not only the Chevron, but also the Rapier, sidelined by alternator problems.
Unfortunately the problem meant the Flat Six run team missed the best of the track conditions as times amongst the top runner improved and Millard and Heward's charge fell to fourth behind the Optimum Motorsport Ginetta G55 and Schulz's Ferrari which jumped into second and third.
Set with six minutes remaining Schulz's best effort in the black Ferrari (46.301) wouldn't have been good enough for pole position based on the Mosler's earlier effort, but the dominance at the top of qualifying was only increased as Morcillo joined the late improvers to dip below 46 seconds to record a final pole time of 45.816 seconds.
With the Rapier holding on for fourth, though more than a second off the ultimate pace, Class One cars locked out the front two rows ahead of the Team Tiger Marcos Mantis.
Class Three was a battle of Lotuses – the Evora of Bullrun and the Elise of the returning Orbital Sound driven by Jamie Stanley and Chris Headlam. The yellow Elise was briefly on provisional pole in the opening minutes and held class pole for much of the session, though the Bullrun Lotus jumped up to fourth overall just before the Chevron related stoppage.
The closing minutes saw Stanley and Headlam jump back ahead, but only for seconds as Martin Byford jumped back ahead by less than two tenths of a second .
Though many of the best laps were set late on, one exception was the Strata 21 Porsche of Adam Sharpe and Dave Pittard, the car now liveried to match the Mosler housed in the neighbouring garage. With emphasis placed on saving tyres and the car for the race Pittard's early lap (48.426) was another to hold provisional pole in the early exchanges though the effort paled into comparison as the faster teams got into their stride.
Still, despite only completing half as many laps as many of their rivals, the pair took Class Four pole by six tenths over the Lotus of Steve Guglielmi and Jeff Mileham, the latter returning to action after two races off.
