Marvin Kirchhöfer earned back-to-back ROWE Pole Position Awards with a dominant display in this morning's Qualifying 2 at Magny-Cours.
The #59 Garage 59 McLaren was half a second clear of the field thanks to a 1m35.508s in the second half of the split session. He and Benjamin Goethe won from pole last time out at Misano and have an excellent shot at repeating the trick this afternoon.
Kirchchöfer will share the front row with last night's winner, Jordan Pepper, who might also fancy his chances of another victory in the #63 Grasser Racing Lamborghini. The South African was 0.560s adrift of pole, with a significant amount of the time loss coming in the first sector.
Thierry Vermeulen was third overall and gave the #69 Emil Frey Racing Ferrari its seventh Gold Cup pole from a possible eight. He was 0.039s shy of Pepper and beat the two factory Ferrari entries from AF Corse – Francorchamps Motors, Arthur Leclerc edging Vincent Abril in this intra-team battle.
Kelvin van der Linde qualified sixth, though a trip over the kerbs at the final chicane cost him a chance to improve and may have resulted in suspension damage to the #32 Team WRT BMW. Still, the Belgian squad fared much better than its chief title rivals, with the #96 Rutronik Porsche 13th fastest and the #48 Winward Mercedes-AMG a distant P16.
Jamie Day gave Comtoyou Racing pole in the Silver Cup, maintaining the form that has rocketed the Belgian squad to the top of the class standings. The #21 Aston Martin was comfortably fastest of all in Q2A and will start from 17th overall this afternoon. César Gazeau was second (P20 overall) in the #10 Boston VDS Mercedes-AMG.
Dustin Blattner scored his third successive Bronze Cup pole in the #74 Kessel Racing Ferrari. He will start 23rd overall, four spots ahead of the #81 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG of Rinat Salikhov. Blattner out-qualified a number of Silver Cup cars on his way to top spot in class.
Three cars did not set a time in Qualifying 2. Jef Machiels crashed in Q2A, eliminating the #52 AF Corse – Francorchamps Motors Ferrari from the session and perhaps this afternoon's race. The #64 HRT Ford Performance and the #112 CSA Racing McLaren have both withdrawn following accidents last night.
Race 2 marks the eighth round of the 2025 Sprint Cup campaign and gets going at 15:15 CEST. It can be watched live on the GT World YouTube channel.
> RESULTS: Qualifying 2