Lucas Salles is the first pole of the year in the GT3 Cup
Friday was the rehearsal for Saturday. Just as he had done the day before, Lucas Salles dominated the qualifying session. It is the sixth pole of the driver of car # 7 in his career with the most produced racing cars on the planet. Raijan Mascarello leaves next to him in the front row, with Nelson Monteiro and Cristian Mohr next. The pole in the Sport class went to rookie Lineu Pires, while he will also start with the debutant Gustavo Farah in the Trophy class.
In the first five minutes of the session, the riders took the opportunity to warm up their tires and understand the conditions of the Velocitta course on Saturday morning.
On a double journey (he also accelerates in the Carrera Cup), Leonardo Sanchez ended up losing his car at the end of the straight, but returned without much damage to machine # 15. When the competitors started to set their fast laps, Marcio Mauro went to the top of the time sheet with 1: 32.356. But soon Lucas Salles, who had dominated the free practice the day before, scored 1: 31.757. So Nelson Monteiro was faster: 1: 31.621. And then car # 87 went down even further, to 1: 31.004. Cristian Mohr set the second time and then the hands retracted to box.
The dispute for the tenth place was fierce. Two and a half minutes to the flag, Caio Castro came in P10, with 1: 32.529. He was one of four drivers in the 1: 32.5 home at that time, just 0.008 behind Ricardo Fontanari, but 0.009 ahead of Ramon Alcaraz.
In the final lap, Eduardo Menossi spiked 1: 32.473 and took Caio Castro's place in the pole race.
The flag determined the order of the drivers in Q2: Monteiro, Mohr, Salles, Mascarello, Mauro, Vina Neves (the best in the Sport class), André Gaidzinksi, Lineu Pires, Menossi and Fontanari. In the Trophy class, with 19th place overall, pole went to Gustavo Farah.
After half the 10 minutes scheduled for the qualifying session by warming the tires, Lucas Salles spiked 1: 31.019. Nelson Monteiro came next, with just 0.055 behind. And behind him, with an astonishing 0.006 was Raijan Mascarello.
But times would still go down.
Salles recorded 1: 30.348 to be the fastest, ahead of Mascarello with 1: 30.464. Monteiro and Mohr followed shortly after, with Pires completing the top5 and provisionally on pole for the Sport class.
After the flag there was no change in the first five and completed the top 10: Fontanari, Mauro, Menossi, Vina and Gaidzinski.
The GT3 Cup starts at 1:48 pm on Saturday.