Antonio Fuoco took pole position for the FIA World Endurance Championship’s inaugural Six Hours of Imola event in Emilia Romagna, Italy, leading a Ferrari one-two-three at the Italian marque’s home circuit.
Fucoco’s 1:29.466 benchmark in the #50 Ferrari 499P was unmatched, with Robert Shwartzman slotting into second in the #83 AF Corse Ferrari 0.419 adrift of the pole time.
Alessandro Pier Guidi ensured Italian fans were left in a buoyant mood as he posted the third fastest time in the #51 Ferrari, 0.487 off of pole.
Dark clouds threatened to dampen the Hypercar parade in the first qualifying session, which started in dry conditions.
The goal for the 19-strong Hypercar field was to post a time within the top-10 to make it into the Hyperpole session and the fight to start Sunday’s enduro from the front of the pack.
But those clouds meant it was paramount to get a strong banker lap in during the early stages of the initial 12-minute session.
The rain didn’t intervene but tyre warmup was still key with the Porsches and Toyotas quickest to set times at the top of the heap as the likes of Brendon Hartley and Kamui Kobayashi traded blows with the Penske and Jota entries.
Matt Campbell emerged as a pacesetter in the #5 Porsche 963 and was the first driver to get into the 1:30s thanks to a 1:30.963, but then the Ferraris came into play going one-two-three courtesy of Fuoco, ahead of Shwartzman and Pier Gudi.
Campbell then slotted into second, just 0.025 back from Fuoco before Hartley duly posted the third-fastest time in the #8 Toyota GR010-Hybrid.
Then with just two minutes left of the initial qualifying session, Dries Vanthoor ran off track and spun at Piratella in the #15 Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8, prompting a brief Red Flag and ending his session.
When green flag running resumed, the top three order remained the same with Kobayashi fourth in the #7 Toyota, Shwartzman fifth, Pier Guidi sixth, Julien Andlauer seventh in the #99 Proton competition Porsche, Rene Rast eighth in the #20 BMW, Callum Ilott ninth in the #12 Jota Porsche and Kevin Estre 10th in the #6 Porsche.
Phil Hanson failed to advance in the #38 Jota car, finishing 11th.
He was joined in elimination by Alex Lynn in the #2 Cadillac V-Series.R machine. Vanthoor in the #15 BMW, the #94 and #93 all-new Peugeot 9X8s, the #63 Lamborghini SC63 and both the #35 and #36 Alpine A424 machines.
The #11 Isotta Fraschini machine brought up the rear of the field, 3,379s back from the top of the leaderboard.
Moving into Hyperpole and once again the Porsches were the quickest to get up and running, initially going one-two-three-five on the leaderboard (Campbell, Estre, Ilott and Andlauer).
The Toyotas of Hartley and Kobayashi responded by going first and second with a 1:33.188 and 1:33.348 respectively.
However, just like the first session, Ferrari took longer to warm up their tyres, but when they did, Fuoco went fastest with a 1:29.735, followed by Pier Guidi posting a 1:30.447 and Swartzman a 1:30.540 laptime.
Hartley then spun his #8 Toyota then spun at Tosa, bringing out the yellow flag temporarily as Porsche improved to third, fourth and sixth in the order of Ilott (1:30.658), Estre (1:30.741) and Andlauer (1:30.782).
The stage was set for a final flurry of runs as Porsche sought to upset Ferrari in front of the adoring Tifosi.
Estre improved to 1:30.101, and Campbell followed suit with a 1:30.385.
However, the German marque couldn’t stop the Prancing horse.
Pier Guidi improved to to a 1:29.885 to go third, before being displaced by Hypercar rookie Shwartzman, who set a 1:29.466 to go second.
Still, Fuoco was unmatched and pushed the benchmark to 1:29.466 to take pole position for Sunday’s Six Hours of Imola enduro.
Behind the top five of Fuoco, Shwartzman, Pier Guidi, Estre and Campbell was sixth-placed Kobayashi, who set a 1:30.410 in the #7 Toyota.
Rast put in BMW’s best qualifying performance of the year so far, setting a time of 1:30.600 to go seventh with Hartley (1:30.652), Ilott (1:30.656) and Andlauer (1:30.692) completing the top-10.
