• Pre-session favourite storms to top spot with significant lap time advantage
• Race start scheduled for 16:30 on Saturday 27 June
PROVISIONAL RESULT: SUPERPOLE
Ferrari will start from the best seat in the house at this year's CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa after Alessio Rovera stormed to a commanding Superpole.
The Italian marque's 296 GT3 EVO was simply untouchable at the Ardennes circuit. Rovera topped each elimination session and then comfortably secured pole in the final shootout, giving Ferrari its first pole at the event since 2017.
The new Superpole format saw the initial 32-car field whittled down to 16 after the opening segment, then to eight and finally to four. The notable casualties from the first segment included the entire BMW contingent, with Jordan Pepper (#32 Team WRT BMW) closest to sneaking through in P18.
Last year's Superpole winner Marvin Kirchhöfer narrowly progressed in the #59 Garage 59 McLaren, but failed to make it any further after finishing P9 in the second session. The #80 Lionspeed GP Porsche of Ricardo Feller also dropped out at this stage by placing P16.
And then there were eight. It could conceivably have been a Ferrari sweep of the top four positions, but star performances from Tom Fleming (#58 Garage 59 McLaren) and Jules Gounon (#3 Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing) saw them progress along with both AF Corse Ferraris.
This meant that Frederik Schandorff (#71 Selected Car Racing Ferrari) took fifth, followed by Ariel Levi in the #66 Tresor Attempto Audi. The Israeli was another star performer, bagging Silver Cup pole in the car that recently took a stunning overall win at Monza.
Dennis Marschall was seventh in the #74 Kessel Racing Ferrari – which had already secured class pole as the only Bronze Cup car to reach the final 32 – while Lucas Auer was eighth in the #48 Mercedes-AMG Team Mann-Filter.
Having led every session, Rovera was the heavy favourite for pole in the final one-lap shootout – and he did not disappoint. The first lap was sent by his teammate Arthur Leclerc in the sister #50 Ferrari, but Rovera beat this by more than half a second with a 2m18.613s.
Tom Fleming prevented a Ferrari front-row lockout by snatching P2 in his McLaren, beating Leclerc by more than a tenth of a second and claiming Gold Cup pole in the process. Gounon was not a serious contender on this occasion, lapping more than a second adrift of Rovera.
The result gave Ferrari its first pole at Spa since 2017, when James Calado led the way for the AF Corse-run Kaspersky Motorsport squad. The #51 entry has scored back-to-back podiums in this event, with Rovera part of the line-up on both occasions.
The biggest GT race in the world gets underway at 16:30 with comprehensive coverage aired live and free around the globe on the GT World YouTube channel.