Feller beats the rain to give Emil Frey Racing Lamborghini third successive Sprint Cup pole

Feller beats the rain to give Emil Frey Racing Lamborghini third successive Sprint Cup pole

The #14 Emil Frey Racing Lamborghini secured its third consecutive GT World Challenge Europe Powered by AWS pole in this afternoon's opening Sprint Cup qualifying session at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.  

Ricardo Feller is making his first appearance in the short-format series since 2018, standing in for Norbert Siedler at the Emil Frey squad. The Swiss youngster completed a dream return, managing conditions perfectly to bag his maiden overall pole. 

Rain began falling shortly before the 20-minute session got underway, making the first set of laps absolutely crucial. Feller produced the best showing, posting a 1m45.572s to beat title contender Luca Stolz (#4 HRT Mercedes-AMG) by 0.367s. 

With the rain intensifying the chance to improve was washed away, ensuring that the order would remain unchanged. That meant that Feller was secure at the top of the timing screens, giving the #14 overall and Silver Cup pole. It comes two weeks after Siedler and Mikaël Grenier swept qualifying at Zandvoort.  

Stolz will start from second, a useful position as he and Maro Engel battle for the overall Sprint Cup title this weekend. Giacomo Altoe took third in the #163 Emil Frey Lamborghini and will line-up alongside Silver Cup frontrunner Jim Pla in the #89 AKKA ASP Mercedes-AMG. The sister #88 car of Timur Boguslavskiy will start fifth, followed by Juusso Puhakka (#2 Toksport WRT Mercedes-AMG) and Nelson Panciatici (#107 CMR Bentley).

Championship leader Charles Weerts could only manage eighth in the #32 Belgian Audi Club Team WRT entry, sharing the fourth row with teammate Ryuichiro Tomita's #31 machine. They led a sequence of six Audis, the last of which was Silver Cup leader Steven Palette in 13th overall and fourth in class. 

There was no such trouble for the Pro-Am favourite: the #93 Sky Tempesta Racing Ferrari earned class pole thanks to another assured performance from Chris Froggatt. The British driver will start 15th overall in this evening's 60-minute contest. The eighth race of the Sprint Cup season gets underway at 17.15 CET, airing live on the official  GT World Challenge Europe website and Facebook pages, as well as the GT World YouTube channel.