Giovinazzi puts pre-season favourite Ferrari on pole in Qatar

Ferrari lived up to its pre-season promise in the first qualifying session of the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship campaign in Qatar today (27 February), as Antonio Giovinazzi put the scarlet #51 499P Hypercar on pole position for the curtain-raising contest.

The traditional ‘Prologue’ group test and free practice sessions around Lusail International Circuit suggested qualifying would be a close and competitive affair – and so it would transpire.

For much of the 12-minute Hyperpole shootout, it was BMW M Team WRT’s Dries Vanthoor who looked set to take the top spot on the grid for tomorrow’s Qatar 1812km race, but Giovinazzi had other ideas, and last year’s COTA pole-sitter pumped in a scintillating last-gasp effort to supplant the Dutchman at the summit of the standings with a lap 0.136 secs quicker than anybody else could muster.

“Everybody in the team has done a fantastic job working to improve the car, and to be on pole is a great achievement,” the Italian enthused. “I was surprised by how much the wind changed at the start of the session and how tricky that made it, but everything came together at the end. I gave it everything in the final sector – I was on the limit – and to take pole on the last lap was really cool.

“It will be a long, intense race tomorrow and we will need to be smart and make sure we take the right decisions, but we are starting from a good position and I think we have the car and the team to score some good points.”

Vanthoor held on to second to secure BMW’s first front row berth in FIA WEC’s Hypercar class, with the #50 Ferrari slotting into third in the hands of Antonio Fuoco. The two Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA entries will start fourth and fifth – Alex Lynn putting the #12 V-Series.R ahead of the #38 piloted by Sébastien Bourdais – with Robin Frijns ensuring both BMWs will line up inside the top six just behind.

It was, conversely, a difficult day for reigning Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ world champions Porsche and Toyota. Neither Porsche Penske Motorsport car ended up inside the top ten – new recruit Julien Andlauer the team’s best representative in 11^th – while Toyota had to be content with seventh place for Nyck de Vries, as Brendon Hartley endured an off-track excursion and a spin, leaving the #8 car a lowly 17^th.

United front in LMGT3

United Autosports replicated its performance from the 2024 FIA WEC finale in Bahrain by locking out the front row in the LMGT3 category in Qatar, as Sean Gelael pipped stablemate Sébastien Baud to the top spot by just under a quarter-of-a-second on his first appearance for the team.

“I haven’t really done qualifying since my Formula 2 days five years ago, so I was a bit rusty!” the Indonesian quipped. “Darren [Leung – team-mate] produced a great lap in Q1, which then gave me the opportunity to do the same in Hyperpole. The United Autosports guys put in so much effort throughout last year and over the winter, and that work is paying off. It’s obviously a ten-hour race so we will need to be vigilant, but we’re off to a good start.”

Akkodis ASP Team threatened to steal its British rival’s thunder, but ultimately, neither series newcomer Finn Gehrsitz nor Clemens Schmid could hook the full lap together, with the German winding up third following a spin – a scant six thousandths-of-a-second adrift of the front row – and the Austrian sixth after losing a potential pole-setting effort to track limits.

The two Lexus RC F LMGT3s were split by Vista AF Corse’s pair of Ferrari 296 LMGT3s – winners of the final two races of last season – while motorcycling legend Valentino Rossi put the best-placed BMW eighth on the grid for Team WRT.

Further back, there was disappointment for TF Sport – with Rui Andrade only ninth and Ben Keating 13^th in the sister entry – and defending champions Manthey, as Ryan Hardwick wound up 11^th in the 1^st Phorm car and Célia Martin 15^th for the Iron Dames at a track where the Porsche 911 GT3 R LMGT3 dominated 12 months ago.

The Qatar 1812km will begin at 14:00 local time (12:00 CET) tomorrow, 28 February. To find out where to watch in your region, click HERE.