Raffaele Marciello shows nerves of steel and secures Saturday pole at Hockenheim: Gounon/Schiller thus out of the ADAC GT Masters title fight
Raffaele Marciello is looking for an early championship decision in the 2022 ADAC GT Masters: at the season finale in Hockenheim, the Landgraf Mercedes driver drove to pole position in Saturday qualifying.
With a lap time of 1:37.944 minutes, the Italian, who drives with a Swiss licence, was the only driver to break the 1:38 minute mark. Marciello’s first place in qualifying and the associated three points also meant the final end of all championship chances for Gounon/Schiller in the ZVO Mercedes 4.
Fabian Schiller finished third on the grid behind Marciello and Albert Costa in the Emil Frey Lamborghini 63 (Costa/Aitken), but for the duo in the AMG 4 the gap in the overall standings has grown to 55 points and can therefore no longer be made up.
Only one chaser left; Lamborghini strong
The only remaining chaser is the Joos Porsche 91 (Engelhart/Güven), which Christian Engelhart drove to fifth place. The Porsche duo thus lose another three points to Marciello and go into Saturday’s race with a 45-point deficit.
This means that EngelhartGüven have to make up 18 points on Marciello in the race in order to postpone the championship decision. A top-8 result in the race is therefore enough for Marciello to secure the 2022 German GT Championship.
And the remaining positions? In fourth place on the grid is a surprising Konsta Lappalainen in the Emil Frey Lamborghini 14 (Wishofer/Lappalainen). The Finn thus rewards himself for a very good performance in qualifying. In general, it shows once again that the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo is a power at Hockenheim.
Licking wounds for Audi
With Maximilian Paul (Paul-Lamborghini 71, Mapelli/Paul) in sixth and Arthur Rougier (Emil-Frey-Lamborghini 19, Perera/Rougier) in eighth, the other two Lambos in the field also made it into the top eight, with Niklas Krütten in the Schubert-BMW 10 (Green/Krütten) sandwiched in between in seventh.
While Lamborghini showed a strong performance, the Audi group had to lick its wounds. The best R8 in qualifying was Luca Engstler in the Rutronik-Audi 15 (Niederhauser/Engstler) in ninth place, followed by Thierry Vermeulen in the Car-Collection-Audi 33 (Drudi/Vermeulen) and Tim Zimmermann in the Land-Audi 1 (Mies/Zimmermann).
Saturday’s round of the 2022 ADAC GT Masters at Hockenheim starts at 13:00. Nitro will broadcast the race live on TV.
