New qualifying record at the Nürburgring and the 50th pole position in the ADAC GT Masters for Lamborghini: Marco Mapelli (I) set not one, but two records on Sunday morning. The Lamborghini works driver from GRT Grasser Racing Team clocked the fastest lap time of 1:25.231 minutes in qualifying.
In doing so, he also achieved a pole position record for the Italian premium manufacturer in the ADAC GT Masters, which was launched back in 2007. Ben Green (GB), in the Schubert BMW, secured the second spot on the front row of the grid for race six of the season, which gets underway at 15:10.
Sunshine, a dry track and 17 degrees Celsius: Mapelli took full advantage of the conditions on the 3.629-kilometre sprint variant of the Nürburgring. He pulverised Frank Stippler’s previous qualifying record, which had stood for five years, by over four tenths of a second. “That feels pretty good. I am very happy. The track conditions and the temperatures were perfect. I was able to exploit the full power of the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2. We saw on Saturday how chaotic it can be at times in the opening stages of a race. For this reason, first place on the grid is hugely important,” said Mapelli. In his previous 54 outings in the ADAC GT Masters, the 35-year-old had never started a race from the front of the grid. As such, he was all the more delighted to win his first Pirelli Pole Position Award.
Starting alongside him on the front row is Green, the 2022 Pirelli Junior champion (+0.010 seconds). Sven Müller (Bingen/Team Joos by Racemotion) qualified third in a Porsche 911 GT3 R, putting him in a good position going into the race in the Eifel Mountains (+0.251 seconds). Fourth place went to Marco Wittmann (Fürth/Project1). The two-time DTM champion was 0.265 seconds slower than the pole-sitter in his BMW M4 GT3. Rounding out the top five was championship leader Elias Seppänen (FIN/Landgraf Motorsport) in a Mercedes-AMG GT3 (+0.343 seconds).
The race on Sunday afternoon will determine who leads the ADAC GT Masters at the halfway point of the season. Sport1 begins its live coverage from the Nürburgring at 15:00 on free-to-air TV. The sixth race of the season will also be streamed free of charge on the YouTube channel @adacmotorsports.
