Weerts and van der Linde qualify 14th of the 15 Pro cars at Zandvoort
Emil Frey takes pole, Garage 59 keeps delivering, and the number 32 has nine cars to pass for half a point
Charles Weerts and Kelvin van der Linde will start the second GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup race at Zandvoort from 27th on the grid. They qualified 22nd and lost five places to a penalty carried over from Magny-Cours. Even that number flatters them. In the Pro Cup, the class that decides their championship, the Team WRT BMW qualified 14th of 15.
Qualifying 2 on Sunday morning set the grid for the afternoon race, and it went to Emil Frey Racing. Konsta Lappalainen put the number 14 Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo on pole with a 1:33.192, two tenths clear of the field, and Ben Green was third in the sister number 69 car. Between them sat the McLaren that won Race 1.
A Ferrari team that was nowhere on Saturday is now on pole
The turnaround is the most striking thing about the session. In Qualifying 1 on Saturday, Matteo Cairoli was 30th in the number 14 with a 1:34.552. On Sunday his co-driver Lappalainen took pole with a lap 1.36 seconds quicker. Emil Frey also finished Race 1 on the podium with the number 69, so the team leaves qualifying with first and third on the grid and a rostrum already banked.
Note which car is which. The number 69 is the Emil Frey Ferrari that carries Verstappen.com backing and is shared by Thierry Vermeulen and Green. The number 3 Mercedes-AMG is the Verstappen Racing entry. They are different cars and different teams.
Garage 59 has been at the front in all three sessions
The only car to have delivered across the whole weekend is the number 58 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo. Thomas Fleming qualified it second on Saturday, the pair won Race 1 outright, and Louis Prette qualified it second again on Sunday with a 1:33.399. It is a Gold Cup car, beating almost every Pro entry in the field, and it starts the second race from the front row for the second day running.
The top of the Race 2 grid
| Pos | No | Drivers | Team | Class | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 14 | Cairoli / Lappalainen | Emil Frey Racing | Pro | 1:33.192 |
| 2 | 58 | Fleming / Prette | Garage 59 | Gold | 1:33.399 |
| 3 | 69 | Vermeulen / Green | Emil Frey Racing | Pro | 1:33.435 |
| 4 | 46 | Rossi / Hesse | Team WRT | Pro | 1:33.461 |
| 5 | 51 | Mosca / Zagazeta | AF Corse | Gold | 1:33.492 |
| 6 | 80 | Buus / Feller | Lionspeed GP | Pro | 1:33.510 |
| 7 | 96 | Engstler / Niederhauser | Rutronik Racing | Pro | 1:33.615 |
| 8 | 84 | Reicher / Haase | Eastalent Racing | Pro | 1:33.771 |
| 9 | 50 | Neubauer / Leclerc | AF Corse | Pro | 1:33.847 |
| 10 | 10 | Knutsson / Magnus | Boutsen VDS | Gold | 1:33.872 |
| 15 | 3 | Juncadella / Lulham | Verstappen Racing | Pro | 1:34.169 |
| 16 | 2 | Schuring / Boccolacci | Boutsen VDS | Pro | 1:34.237 |
| 27 | 32 | Weerts / van der Linde | Team WRT | Pro | 1:34.485 |
Forty five cars qualified: 15 in Pro, eight in Gold, 12 in Silver and 10 in Bronze. Two of them start lower than they qualified. The number 32 drops five places on a penalty carried over from Magny-Cours, and the number 66 drops three.
Fourteenth of fifteen is the number that matters
The three cars with something to protect are all out of position. The number 3 Mercedes-AMG of Dani Juncadella and Chris Lulham qualified 15th overall and 11th in Pro. The number 2 Boutsen VDS Porsche of Morris Schuring and Dorian Boccolacci, which took pole and finished second on Saturday, is 16th overall and 12th in Pro. The number 32 BMW qualified 22nd overall and 14th in Pro, 1.293 seconds off Lappalainen, and starts 27th once the Magny-Cours penalty is applied.
For Weerts and van der Linde that follows a technical failure in Race 1 that left the car stopped at the side of the circuit and brought out a full course yellow. Two sessions and one race into the weekend, Weerts and van der Linde have scored nothing at Zandvoort and start the last race of the round second from last among the 15 Pro cars.
Nine cars to pass for half a point
Sprint Cup points go to the first ten finishers only, on this ladder. If the class structure is new to you, our guide to GT World Challenge Europe explains how the four Cups work.
| Position | Points | Position | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 16.5 | 6th | 4.5 |
| 2nd | 12 | 7th | 3 |
| 3rd | 9.5 | 8th | 2 |
| 4th | 7.5 | 9th | 1 |
| 5th | 6 | 10th | 0.5 |
The driver who sets the fastest time in each qualifying session takes one further point, so Lappalainen and Cairoli have already banked one this morning. Crucially, the same ladder is applied twice: once to the overall classification and once inside each Cup. That is why a Pro car can finish well down the road and still score in its own championship.
It is also why 22nd is worse than it looks rather than better. The tenth and last paying position in Pro currently belongs to the number 48 Winward Mercedes-AMG of Lucas Auer and Maro Engel, which starts 13th overall. To reach it, the number 32 has to pass fourteen cars on the road, four of them Pro entries: Auer and Engel, the number 3 Mercedes, the number 2 Porsche and the second Garage 59 McLaren. The reward for doing all of that is half a point.
The groups were split by class, and that changes how the grid reads
Qualifying at Zandvoort runs in two groups whose times are then merged into one classification, and on Sunday the split was by category. Group A held the 22 Silver and Bronze Cup cars of the 45-car entry and was headed by the Comtoyou Aston Martin of Arthur Dorison and Oliver Soderstrom on a 1:34.330. Group B held the 23 Pro and Gold entries and was quicker throughout.
The merged result means several Silver and Bronze cars start ahead of Pro machinery. Dorison and Soderstrom line up 19th, eight places ahead of the Team WRT BMW. The 2Seas Mercedes-AMG of Kiern Jewiss and Charles Dawson, a Bronze Cup entry, is 20th, also ahead of it.
One more Dutch interest: Flynt Schuring qualified the Lionspeed GP Porsche 11th in Group A and 32nd overall, with a 1:35.130 in the Silver Cup.
Our doubt about where this title fight is going
Our doubt is whether the drivers at the top of the table are still the ones shaping this championship. Over two days at Zandvoort the quickest cars have been a Ferrari that qualified 30th on Saturday morning and a Gold Cup McLaren that has out-qualified almost the entire Pro field twice, while the points leaders have taken a retirement and a place second from last in their own class. One round does not settle a season. But a weekend in which the leaders score nothing and start 27th is how a points lead quietly stops being one.
Race 2 starts at 14:15
The race runs for one hour with a single mandatory pit stop. The official grid sheet marks who starts each car: Lappalainen in the number 14, Prette in the number 58, Green in the number 69, Lulham in the number 3, Boccolacci in the number 2 and van der Linde in the number 32. In the number 46 Team WRT BMW it is Max Hesse rather than Valentino Rossi. Watch the first ten minutes: at a circuit where overtaking is difficult, anyone who has to climb through the pack will need the stop to do most of the work. Results remain provisional and subject to final scrutineering. We are following the race as it happens on the RNT live blog, and every session from this round is collected on our GT World Challenge Europe page.
