The pole position at the ADAC Zurich 24h Race was gained by a Ferrari: The fastest time set by the Ferrari F458 Italia GT of the team Farnbacher in the first qualifying session turned out to be unbeatable in the second timed practice at the classical Nürburgring long-distance race which will take place for the 39th time. The time of 8:23,764 minutes achieved by Dominik Farnbacher already on Thursday evening was the fastest lap of the weekend. Supported by his team mates Allan Simonsen (Monaco), Marco Seefried (Nürnberg/ Germany) and Jaime Melo (Italy), Farnbacher who lives in Ansbach will now start the race from pole position.
The crew which finished last year’s race in second place will share the first row on the grid with Mamerow, Hahne and Kaffer in their Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3. All those who wish to see the racing action at this spectacular endurance race featuring more than 200 race cars live may still purchase tickets at the box offices on-site. All those who prefer to stay at home in contrast will not miss the action either as Sport1 will accompany the 24h Race with comprehensive live transmissions.
The first grid row is made up of true private teams. “We are particularly happy to be in front of the works teams”, said polesitter Dominik Farnbacher after the timed practice with a big smile. “Even though I am not fully convinced that the qualifying results reflect the actual balance of power.” Second placed Chris Mamerow, too, could not refrain from smiling. “After our bad luck yesterday in our first lap, we could fully attack today. We are extremely happy with the result.”
Right after the beginning of the second timed practice, the times became better and many of the top teams wanted to use the traffic free track to improve their times again. Indeed, the classification was considerably upset, apart from the pole position. With Heyer, Jäger, Bleekmolen and Seyffart, another Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 and the works BMW M3 GT driven by Lamy, Müller, Werner and Adorf will follow in the second row on the grid. In heavy traffic and under changing weather conditions, no team apart from the polesitter was however able to improve the fastest time of last year’s practice. The Audi and Porsche teams for example the fastest of which will start the race from fourth grid row did not meet the expectations.
