As it bids to get its title defence off to a winning start on home soil, Ferrari topped four of the five testing and practice sessions around the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari, but when it came to qualifying for tomorrow’s FIA World Endurance Championship curtain-raising contest, the Prancing Horse’s rivals turned up the wick.

Ferrari’s all-conquering 499P was still firmly in the mix – courtesy of Giovinazzi and countryman Antonio Fuoco, with the pair initially trading fastest laps in the top ten Hyperpole showdown – but so too were Toyota and Peugeot.

Rising star Malthe Jakobsen produced a stellar effort in Team Peugeot TotalEnergies’ #94 9X8, but as the clock ticked down towards zero, Ryō Hirakawa stormed to the summit of the standings in TOYOTA RACING’s heavily updated TR010 Hybrid.

That looked to be that, but Giovinazzi had other ideas. On the very last lap of the session, the Italian thrilled the thousands of tifosi packing the circuit grandstands to snatch pole position by a margin of just 0.011 seconds, with the leading quartet blanketed by a minuscule 0.073 seconds as Hirakawa, Fuoco and Jakobsen rounded out the front two rows of the grid.

“That was a lot more difficult than last year!” quipped Giovinazzi of his fourth career pole in FIA WEC competition. “After seeing Toyota run on the medium tyres in the first part of qualifying, we knew they would be a threat in Hyperpole, and with the hotter temperatures compared to last year, our car wasn’t so easy to drive.

“I was on an even quicker lap earlier in the session until I made a mistake, so I’m really happy that in the end I was able to do enough, because we know how important track position is here, but it was certainly intense and it will make for a fun race to watch tomorrow, that’s for sure!”

NEWCOMER STARS IN LMGT3
Garage 59 made a grand entrance into the championship as rising star – and FIA WEC rookie – Tom Fleming produced a scintillating performance in the Hyperpole shootout.

For much of the ten-minute session, Fleming looked untouchable as he set purple sector after purple sector, and while the opposition narrowed the gap later on, ultimately nobody could hold a candle to the McLaren racer.

Akkodis ASP Team sewed up second and third positions courtesy of impressive efforts from Hadrien David – another series newcomer – in the #78 Lexus RC F and team-mate Clemens Schmid in the sister #87 entry. The Frenchman wound up 0.226secs adrift of Fleming, while the Austrian endured a wild ride through the gravel at Rivazza on his penultimate lap that scuppered a potential pole-challenging run.

The Hyperpole session was red-flagged in the closing stages after Salih Yoluç spun the #34 Racing Team Turkey by TF Corvette – in which team-mate Peter Dempsey had earlier set an astonishing pace to leave his Bronze-graded rivals trailing on his return to full-time competition for the first time since 2013 – into the Piratella gravel trap.