Klaus Bachler set the third fastest time in the Superpole session with the Porsche 911 GT3 R of the dinamic motorsport customer team. His brand colleagues Kévin Estre and Sven Müller finished sixth and 14th respectively in the top 20 individual time trial. The 24 Hours of Endurance Race at Spa-Francorchamps starts on Saturday at 16:45 CEST.

The three best-placed Porsche customer teams will start the 24-hour race on the Grand Prix circuit of Spa-Franchorchamps tomorrow from third, sixth and 14th place. Former Porsche Junior Klaus Bachler set a lap time of 2:16.446 minutes in the Superpole session on Friday evening. The Austrian thus placed the 911 GT3 R of Dinamic Motorsport on the second row of the grid in his first of two ranked attempts. He was 0.22 seconds short of pole position on the 7.004-kilometre track. Bachler shares the approximately 368 kW (500 hp) GT3 racing car with his compatriot Thomas Preining and the Frenchman Côme Ledogar.

Works driver Kévin Estre achieved the second-best result for Porsche: The Frenchman circled the Circuit de Spa with the GPX Racing race car as sixth fastest in 2:16.702 minutes. Together with his team-mates Michael Christensen (Denmark) and Richard Lietz (Austria), Estre has already won the Belgian 24-hour classic for GPX in 2019. Sven Müller from Germany, another former Porsche junior, finished the shootout of the 20 fastest drivers in qualifying in fourteenth place. He shares the 911 GT3 R of Toksport WRT with the German Marvin Dienst and Julien Andlauer from France.

In the four-part qualifying session on Thursday evening, the works driver trio Matt Campbell from Australia, Mathieu Jaminet (France) and the Brazilian Felipe Nasr in the EMA Motorsport car missed out on the lap of the fastest 20 by just 0.25 seconds. The fifth Porsche in the Pro category will be driven by Dennis Olsen from Norway, Briton Nick Tandy and works driver Laurens Vanthoor from Belgium. They had to end qualifying prematurely with the KCMG 911 GT3 R due to a brake problem and are now in 64th place on the grid. Nico Menzel and Stefan Aust (both Germany), the Belgian Alessio Picariello and the Swiss Niki Leutwiler were able to secure second place in the Pro-Am classification with the number 24 car of Herberth Motorsport. Florian Latorre (France), Alex Malykhin (UK), Julien Apothéloz (CH) and former Porsche Junior Ayhancan Güven from Turkey finished fourth in the gold class for Allied Racing.

The 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps is one of the world's most important events for GT3 racing cars. At this year's edition, Porsche is represented more extensively than ever before: Nine customer teams are fielding a total of 13 of the approximately 368 kW (500 hp) 911 GT3 R. The sports car manufacturer has set itself the goal of winning the endurance race for the third time since 2019. A year after Estre, Christensen and Lietz, Laurens Vanthoor (Belgium), New Zealander Earl Bamber and Nick Tandy from Great Britain were the first to cross the finish line in the 911 GT3 R of Rowe Racing. So far, Porsche has won the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps eight times. The motorsport classic on the famous "Ardennes roller coaster" has been held since 1924.

The event in the live stream
The 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps counts for the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup and the Intercontinental GT Challenge (IGTC). Drivers and cars receive points for the GT World Challenge after six, twelve and 24 hours. The race starts on Saturday at 16:45 and will be streamed live on the www.intercontinentalgtchallenge.com website.

Comments on qualifying
Sebastian Golz (Project Manager Porsche 911 GT3 R): "That was a very successful presentation by our customer teams in the Superpole session. This applies in particular to Dinamic Motorsport: Klaus Bachler completed two laps with only a few hundredths of a second difference – it couldn't be more perfect. Kévin Estre also delivered a very good performance. Overall, we have positioned our three vehicles very well. With this result, we certainly do not need to hide. We can all look forward to the race with great confidence. Now we are attacking."

Klaus Bachler (Porsche 911 GT3 R #54): "I felt it was a privilege to be able to drive the Superpole session. Third place is a great result. We have thus secured a very good starting position for the race and are now highly motivated at the start. In the race, however, we have to be strong, especially over the distance. For this, the balance must be right. In addition, we should remain error-free – i.e. avoid penalties and touching. If all this works out, we can be at the front in the end."

Sven Müller (Porsche 911 GT3 R #100): "Superpole was really fun. It was an honour for me to be able to drive this session for the team. But unfortunately we didn't get everything together. I was hoping for a little more. Nevertheless, starting position 14 is a good starting position. Our team is very strong and our car ran extremely well yesterday in night practice in the long run. We can look forward to a long and exciting race."

Kévin Estre (Porsche 911 GT3 R #221): "It wasn't a perfect lap, but it was undoubtedly a pretty good one – I might have been a few hundredths of a second faster here and there. But honestly, we didn't have what it takes for pole position today. I'm still pretty happy: we didn't try anything special for the Superpole session. We just wanted to do our best, we succeeded. We have a long race ahead of us in which you have to stay out of trouble. Starting from the top 10 is a good starting position against this background."

Results Superpole:
1. Pepper/Caldarelli/Mapelli (RSA/MC/CH), Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo #6, 2:16.221 minutes
2. Marciello/Juncadella/Gounon (CH/E/F), Mercedes-AMG GT3 #88, 2:16.375 minutes
3. Bachler/Ledogar/Preining (A/F/A), Porsche 911 GT3 R #54, 2:16.446 minutes
6. Estre/Christensen/Lietz (F/DK/A), Porsche 911 GT3 R #221, 2:17.030 minutes
14. Andlauer/Dienst/Müller (F/D/D), Porsche 911 GT3 R #100, 2:17.636 minutes

Further results Qualifying:
22. Campbell/Jaminet/Nasr (AUS/F/BR), Porsche 911 GT3 R #74, 2:18.090 minutes
38. Malykhin/Apothéloz/Latorre/Güven (UK/CH/F/TR), Porsche 911 GT3 R #91, 2:18.806 minutes
46. Roda/Calamia/Nakken/Pedersen (I/CH/N/DK), Porsche 911 GT3 R #56, 2:19.177 minutes
49. Leutwiler/Aust/Picariello/Menzel (CH/D/B/D), Porsche 911 GT3 R #24, 2:19.312 minutes
53rd Au/Tse/Pereira/Evans (HK/MAC/L/NZ), Porsche 911 GT3 R #9, 2:19.996 minutes
54th Bhirombhakdi/Hamon/Sathienthirakul/Bamber (T/F/T/NZ), Porsche 911 GT3 R #39, 2:20.077 minutes
55th Fischli/Sturm/Matthiesen/Andronaco (CH/D/DK/D), Porsche 911 GT3 R #22, 2:20.356 minutes
60th Da Silva/B. Grove/S. Grove/Payne (MAL/AUS/AUS/NZ), Porsche 911 GT3 R #16, 2:21.908 minutes
64th Tandy/Vanthoor/Olsen (UK/B/N), Porsche 911 GT3 R #47
NC Bohn / A. Renauer / R. Renauer (D/D/D), Porsche 911 GT3 R #911