The Ferrari Finali Mondiali got underway Friday morning at Imola in bright October sunshine with the first qualifying session for the Coppa Shell of the Ferrari Challenge Europe.
After a brief interruption with the red flag because of the presence of gravel on track at the Rivazza, probably due to a spin by Corinna Gostner, the battle for pole was a hard-fought one right until the final minutes of the session.
In the end it was the Polish driver, Roman Zieman who headed the timesheets, grabbing the top slot with a lap of 1m44.149s: next up was 2022 champion Franz Engstler, four-thousandths of a second behind.
It was a good result for Zieman, who in this way gains one point on Axel Sartigen in the battle for second place in the championship, reducing the gap to 8 points. In any case, the German also had a good qualifying session, ending up third, albeit more than four-tenths of a second adrift.
Fourth place went to another Gostner, Thomas, but in his case the gap was almost six-tenths. Making up the top 5 was the outgoing world champion Ernst Kirchmayr, with Manuela Gostner right behind to complete the group of drivers separated by one second.
In the AM class, an eighth place overall for Peter Christensen, behind Claudio Schiavoni, was good enough to earn pole position, the Dane setting a time of 1m45.321s, getting the better of Sweden’s Joakim Olander by just over two-tenths. Third quickest time in class and tenth overall went to champion Alexander Nussbaumer.
A bit further behind were the two contenders for the runner-up slot in the championship: Christian Herdt-Wipper was fourth in class and 13th overall, while Martinus Richter will start the race from 15th place on the grid, and sixth in class.
