Feller Quickest in Qualifying; Top Ten Advance to Pole Battle

Photo: Gruppe C Photography/SRO

Ricardo Feller set the quickest time in qualifying for the Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour, which saw the top ten cars advance to this afternoon’s Pirelli Pole Battle.

Feller’s 2:01.894 in the No. 183 Jamec Racing/Team MPC Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II was 0.032 seconds quicker than the Pro-Am classed No. 91 Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3 R of Laurin Heinrich.

Sheldon van der Linde was third in the No. 32 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3, with Cameron Waters and Maro Engel completing the top-five.

Others to make the Pole Battle included SunEnergy1 Racing’s Luca Stolz, the No. 77 Craft-Bamboo Racing Mercedes-AMG of Lucas Auer, Chaz Mostert’s No. 26 Arise Racing GT Ferrari 296 GT3, as well as the No. 9 Hallmark Audi of Lee Holdsworth.

Scott Andrews took the tenth and final slot in the No. 44 Geyer Valmont Racing/Tigani Motorsport Audi.

Positions seven through ten were set in Q1, which were for cars from the bottom half of the time charts in Saturday’s final practice.

Defending Bathurst 12 Hour winner Matt Campbell, in the No. 911 Absolute Racing Porsche, missed out on the Pole Battle by less than one-tenth of a second and will start the race 11th.

Among the other notable entries to not make the Pole Battle included the No. 46 WRT BMW of Raffaele Marciellio (12th) and Ross Gunn’s Heart of Racing by SPS Mercedes (13th).

The BMW was seen in the pit lane with an apparent overheating issue, which prevented another attempt by Marciello.

The No. 50 Vantage KTM X-Bow GT2 of David Crampton, the lone Invitational entrant, will start 19th overall.

GT4 pole honors went to the No. 19 Team Nineteen Mercedes-AMG GT4 of Adam Christodoulou, who outpaced the pair of Method Motorsport McLaren Artura GT4s.

The No. 25 Method McLaren returned to action after its accident in this morning’s first practice session to set the second quickest time in class.

The Pirelli Pole Battle begins at 4:05 p.m. local time (12:05 a.m. ET).

RESULTS: Qualifying