Ferrari and Rossi steal the show in Imola qualifying

Hypercar

Antonio Giovinazzi remains undefeated in Hyperpole in FIA WEC this year. In the Qatar curtain-raiser back, the Italian topped the timesheets by 0.136secs. Around the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, he increased that margin to an impressive 0.758secs, as none of his rivals proved able to hold a candle to his extraordinary effort. 

“It’s always a super-nice feeling to qualify in front of all the tifosi at our home race,” enthused the 31-year-old. “I need to thank the team. The car has been fantastic since FP1. I was really scared about track limits, but I tried to put it all together in qualifying and in Hyperpole. The ideal lap is always difficult to achieve, but I think we did a great job today.”

The #51 Ferrari AF Corse 499P Hypercar will duly start at the front of the field for the second race in succession, and alongside will be the #83 AF Corse entry, piloted in qualifying by Robert Kubica. That was a remarkable result for a car that lost much of the earlier FP3 session due to a mechanical issue.

BMW M Team WRT was once again best-of-the-rest, with Dries Vanthoor securing third on the grid behind the wheel of the #15 BMW M Hybrid V8, a further two tenths-of-a-second in arrears. The TOYOTA GAZOO Racing entries were extremely evenly-matched in fourth and fifth – Ryō Hirakawa and Nyck de Vries separated by a scant 0.001secs in favour of the former – with Mick Schumacher placing a strong sixth for Alpine Endurance Team.

Jean-Éric Vergne took seventh for Team Peugeot TotalEnergies’ 9X8, ahead of Charles Milesi in the second Alpine A424 – the Frenchman enduring a couple of gravelly moments during the course of the session.

Alex Lynn – battling back from a crash during final practice – dug deep for ninth in the rebuilt #12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA V-Series.R, with defending champion Kévin Estre just tenth, as Porsche Penske Motorsport continues to struggle.

There were worse fortunes still for the #50 Ferrari AF Corse entry, as Antonio Fuoco – last year’s pole-sitter at Imola – was stripped of his spot in Hyperpole due to a track limits transgression. The reigning 24 Hours of Le Mans-winning crew will begin tomorrow’s six-hour race from 18th and last place on the Hypercar grid.

LMGT3

Barely half-an-hour before Giovinazzi’s Hypercar heroics, Valentino Rossi had already sent the thousands of spectators thronging the circuit grandstands into rapture by storming to his and BMW’s first pole position in the fiercely-disputed LMGT3 category.

Team-mate Ahmad Al-Harthy laid the foundations with a monster lap of his own behind the wheel of the #46 BMW M4 LMGT3 EVO in the first part of the session, with Rossi then maintaining that momentum in the subsequent Hyperpole shootout.

Despite losing a lap to a track limits infringement, ‘The Doctor’ was a factor throughout the ten-minute showdown, mastering the 4.909km Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari with a stellar effort that ultimately nobody else could match to raise BMW’s hopes of replicating its Imola victory from 12 months ago.

“The track limits situation is tricky – there are a lot of places where, if you push too hard, it can be a problem and I’m very good at track limits, I can do them a lot!” Rossi joked. “I also had quite a lot of pressure from Ahmad [Al-Harthy], because he did a fantastic lap in the first in the first part of qualifying. I did another track limit (violation), but fortunately, the car was strong and I had enough grip to try again and managed to improve. 

“Pole is a fantastic achievement and I’m very happy, especially after the first race which was a bit more difficult. The team and BMW did very good job and to do this here at Imola with all the fans is so special. Tomorrow, we hope to fight for the win.”

The multiple MotoGP world champion ultimately wound up just under a third-of-a-second clear of Clemens Schmid in the leading Akkodis ASP Team Lexus, with the Japanese sportscar continuing to show much-improved form in 2025. Zacharie Robichon completed the top three in Heart of Racing’s Aston Martin, with Qatar winner Ben Keating able to manage no better than 16th in TF Sport’s Corvette.