The Equipe Verschuur Renault RS01 (#9, Harrie Kolen / Erik van Loon / Mike Verschuur) will start from pole position for the inaugural 12H MONZA, following a tight battle for the top spot during qualifying.
Mike Verschuur lapped the 5.793km Autodromo Nazionale di Monza in 1m 48.821s on his final fast lap, moving the returning Renault RS01 ahead of long-time provisional polesitter, the Herberth Motorsport Porsche 991 GT3 R (#93, Steffen Görig / Stefan Aust / Klaus Bachler), in the process. Barely one-tenth of a second splits the front row.
Having missed the front row by just half a second, the Herberth Motorsport Porsche 991 GT3 R (#91, Daniel Allemann / Ralf Bohn / Robert Renauer / Alfred Renauer) will line up third for the first part of this afternoon’s Hankook 12H MONZA, and thus shares the second row with the Car Collection Motorsport Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo (#34, Johannes Dr. Kirchhof / Elmar Grimm / Max Edelhof). The latter endured a tough session, having been served a drive-through penalty for a re-fueling infringement.
Despite the team’s Mercedes-AMG GT3 grinding to a halt on pit exit on its warm-up lap, MP Racing (#58, Thomas Gostner / David Gostner / Manuela Gostner / Corinna Gostner / Giorgio Sernagiotto) will start its first 24H SERIES powered by Hankook event from 5th.
Having been among the front runners earlier in the session, the Wochenspiegel Team Monschau Ferrari 488 GT3 (#22, Georg Weiss / Leonard Weiss / Jochen Krumbach / Hendrik Still) was eventually shuffled back to 7th on the grid.
The German team will start one place behind the third Herberth Motorsport entry (#92, Jürgen Häring / Taki Konstantinou / Alfred Renauer), which took overall victory at the previous round in Portimão.
Like the GT3 field, pole position for the GTX runners was confirmed in the closing moments of the session as the Reiter Engineering KTM GTX Concept (#746, Stefan Rosina / Laura Kraihamer / Eike Angermayr) moved ahead of the returning ARC Bratislava Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo (#707, Miro Konopka / Mato Konopka / Mato Homola) on its final run.
The Slovakian team’s laps would later be disallowed though following an irregularity with the Lanborghini’s balance of performance. That means the JR Motorsport BMW M3 F80 (#703, Ted van Vliet / Ruud Olij) will now start 2nd in-class.
Across in 991, the Speed Lover Porsche 991-II Cup (#978, Dominique Bastien / Gavin Pickering) took category pole position ahead of its sister entry (#979, Olivier Dons / Eric Mouez / Rolf Lietart), while the MDM Motorsport BMW M4 GT4 (#450, Tom Coronel / Tim Coronel / Jan Jaap van Roon) was the fastest GT4-class runner and rounds out the GT field.