The FIA World Endurance Championship’s newest race-winner BMW will start at the front of the field for this weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, after Cadillac lost what would have been a second consecutive Le Mans pole position for the American manufacturer due to a penalty.
When the dust settled at the end of a frenetic Hyperpole 2 shootout around the iconic Circuit de la Sarthe, a five thousandths-of-a-second was all that separated Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA’s Jack Aitken from BMW M Team WRT’s Dries Vanthoor. It was the latter, though, that would inherit pole after the Brit was stripped of his best lap time due to having left the working lane to join the fast lane at the beginning of the session before being authorised to do so.
For the majority of the 15-minute showdown, the top spot on the starting grid had looked to be heading BMW’s way in any case, as Vanthoor punched in a succession of purple sectors and fastest laps, but on his final flyer, Aitken – in only his second appearance for Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA – surged to the summit of the timing screens by the narrowest of margins.
Post-session, however, the #38 Cadillac V-Series.R tumbled down the classification to 10th due to the penalty, promoting the #15 BMW M Hybrid V8 that Vanthoor shares with Kevin Magnussen and Raffaele Marciello to pole.
“I’m super-happy to give everybody in the team who has worked so hard over the past months and years what they deserve,” the Belgian commented. “That said, we obviously shouldn’t be too happy yet, because our goal is to win the race so we need to keep it clean over the weekend, but it’s a great position to start.”
Cadillac will still have one car on the front row courtesy of Will Stevens in second, with António Félix da Costa backing up a pace-setting Hyperpole 1 performance by team-mate Charles Milesi to put the #35 Alpine Endurance Team A424 third. The second BMW – the Spa-winning #20 entry piloted in Hyperpole 2 by Robin Frijns – rounds out the top four.
Hypercar newcomer Genesis Magma Racing produced a phenomenal effort to line up sixth and ninth in the hands of Paul-Loup Chatin and former world champion André Lotterer, with the best Ferrari – the 2023 Le Mans-winning #51 499P – just eighth and neither Toyota advancing beyond Hyperpole 1, leaving the multiple title-winning Japanese marque a lowly 14th and 15th.
Heart of Racing Aston Martin dominated in LMGT3, with the British manufacturer’s works driver Mattia Drudi claiming pole position behind the wheel of Vantage GT3 by almost a full second.
Esteban Masson claimed his maiden Le Mans LMP2 class pole position in the #29 Forestier Racing by Panis entry.
