Will Stevens caused a small upset when he took pole position for the European Le Mans Series round at Silverstone, with his #23 Panis Barthez Competition Ligier beating the championship-leading G-Drive Racing Oreca in the process.
EuroInternational took their maiden ELMS pole position in the LMP3 class, while Proton Competition finished first and second in the LMGTE class.
LMP2
Stevens, who shares the car with Frenchmen Timothe Buret and Julien Canal, set a late time of 1:43.690 to deny Jean-Eric Vergne, who shares with Roman Rusinov and Andrea Pizzitola, the pole position by more than seven-tenths of a second, with G-Drive having looked odds-on earlier in the day to take the spot after dominating practice on Saturday.
The #21 DragonSpeed Oreca of Henrik Hedman, Ben Hanley and Nicolas Lapierre will line-up third on the grid after ending 0.849 seconds off the pace of Stevens, with the #29 Duqueine Engineering Oreca of Pierre Ragues, Nicolas Jamin and Nelson Panciatici fourth ahead of the #40 G-Drive Racing Oreca of James Allen, Jose Gutierrez and Garry Findlay.
LMP3
The #12 EuroInternational Ligier of Mattia Drudi and Andrea Dromedari stormed to their first pole position in LMP3, with the former’s lap of 1:55.508 enough to beat the #6 360 Racing Ligier of Ross Kaiser, James Swift and Terrence Woodward by just 0.046 seconds.
United Autosports will line-up on the second row, with the #2 Ligier of Sean Rayhall and John Falb ahead of the sister #3 of Matt Bell, Anthony Wells and Garret Grist, the two Ligier’s 0.154 and 0.295 seconds off the pace respectively.
The leading Norma on the grid will be the #17 of Ultimate entry of Matthieu and Jean-Baptiste Lahaye and Francois Heriau in fifth, 0.411 seconds back on Drudi’s pole lap.
LMGTE
Just over a tenth of a second split the top three in LMGTE, but it was the #77 Proton Competition Porsche of Dennis Olsen, Christian Ried and Marvin Dienst that grabbed class pole position, although it came after the #55 Spirit of Race Ferrari lose an even faster time due to track limits.
This ensured Proton Competition earned themselves a one-two lock-out, with the sister car to the pole sitter, the #88 of Matteo Cairoli, Gianluca Roda and Giorgio Roda second fastest, with the #86 Gulf Racing UK Porsche of Ben Barker, Michael Wainwright and Alex Davison third.
As a result of losing their best lap, the #55 of Duncan Cameron, Matthew Griffin and Aaron Scott will start fifth in class, just behind the JMW Motorsport Ferrari of Liam Griffin, Alex MacDowall and Miguel Molina.
