SILVERSTONE, England: Oman’s Al Faisal al Zubair will start the British round of the 2019 Porsche Mobil 1 Super Cup from an excellent seventh position after a closely fought qualifying session at the Silverstone circuit in Northamptonshire on Saturday evening. The young member of the BWT Lechner Racing Team posted a best lap of 2min 02.702sec during his seven-lap qualifying stint in a session where pole position fell to Turkey’s Ayhancan Guven with a time of 2min 02.288sec and Florian Latorre and Australia’s Jaxon Evans claimed the remaining podium positions.
Al Zubair said: “I am very happy with this result — P7 after no testing. I was one of the very few who did not test and that is amazing for me. I felt very happy after yesterday to go from P19 to P7. I need to make sure I get a good haul of points this weekend. That would be amazing.”
The 30-minute qualifying session took centre stage on Saturday evening with a field of 32 drivers taking part, including guest VIP driver Chris Hoy from the world of Olympic track cycling.
Larry ten Voorde posted the early target time of 2min 02.658sec with Al Zubair climbing through the early field with an impressive opener of 2min 03.241sec to hold ninth. Ten Voorde ran even quicker on his third timed lap to consolidate his early lead with a run of 2min 02.567sec, but Al Zubair slipped back to 15th.
The leading runners returned to the pits soon afterwards with Ten Voorde leading from Latorre, Evans and Julien Andlauer. Al Zubair also pitted after four laps and held 15th position.
Al Zubair returned to the circuit with nine minutes of the session remaining and Evans the only front-runner out on the track before him.
The rest of the leading group returned to action with eight minutes of the stint to run, as Evans stormed to the top with a 2min 02.517sec run and Al Zubair leapt up to fourth with a 2min 02.702sec run before dropping back to fifth.
With less than three minutes of the session remaining, Evans led from Mikkel Pedersen, Ten Voorde, Latorre and Al-Zubair, but Andlauer moved up to sixth at the expense of the Omani and Ayhancan Guven stormed to the top of the rankings with a lap of 2min 02.288sec with just over a minute to run.
Al Zubair pitted and ran out of time to take another lap and settled for seventh place, as Güven held on to claim pole from Latorre and Evans.
Al Zubair needed to show improvement after finishing Friday evening’s opening practice session in 19th place with a best lap of 2min 04.564sec after running 18 tours of the circuit.
Victory in the session fell to Turkish driver Ayhancan Guven with a best lap of 2min 03.078sec that was 0.197sec faster than the best run set by Florian Latorre. Julien Andlauer, Michael Ammermuller and Jaxon Evans rounded off the top five.
The fourth round of the Porsche Mobil 1 Super Cup is scheduled for 11.15hrs on Sunday.
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