24h Le Mans: Historic pole position! Dries Vanthoor puts the #15 BMW M Hybrid V8 on pole.

Le Mans. Fantastic qualifying for the 24 Hours of Le Mans (FRA)! Dries Vanthoor (BEL), driving the #15 BMW M Hybrid V8 for BMW M Team WRT, secured the very first pole position ever for BMW M Motorsport at Le Mans. With a time of 3:22.564 minutes, Vanthoor was initially second by the tiniest margin of 0.005 seconds, but the fastest lap of the Cadillac ahead of him was cancelled. In the #20 Shell BMW M Hybrid V8, Robin Frijns (NED) completed the excellent team result in the Hypercar class by finishing fourth.

Both WRT cars also made it into Hyperpole 2 in the LMGT3 class. There, Sean Gelael (INA) and Parker Thompson (CAN) put the two BMW M4 GT3 EVOs into the fifth and sixth starting positions. The 24 Hours of Le Mans will begin on Saturday at 16:00 CEST.

Quotes after qualifying for the 24 Hours of Le Mans:

Andreas Roos (Head of BMW M Motorsport): “A fantastic qualifying session for the 24 Hours of Le Mans – it couldn’t have gone any better. Just getting all four cars into Hyperpole 2 was a huge success in itself, but to have now secured BMW M Motorsport’s first ever pole position at Le Mans is simply fantastic! Congratulations to Dries Vanthoor on a brilliant lap and many thanks to everyone who has worked on this project over the years. This is a fantastic reward for their efforts. We’ll relish seeing our BMW M Hybrid V8 right at the front of the grid on Saturday, but now we’re focusing fully on race preparation.”

Vincent Vosse (Team Principal, BMW M Team WRT): “That is a great surprise! I am very happy to be on pole position for the first time in Hypercar. I take that, of course, but at the same time congratulations to Cadillac and Jack Aitken for putting on a great show! Overall, we at WRT can be extremely happy with the qualifying results. Now let’s focus on the race.”

Dries Vanthoor (BMW M Team WRT, #15 BMW M Hybrid V8, Pole position): “I’m super happy to be on pole at Le Mans! This is such a great event, and now being on pole here and giving everyone in the team what they deserve, is awesome. At the same time our goal is to win the race, so we need to keep it clean over 24 hours to be right there on Sunday.”

Robin Frijns (BMW M Team WRT, #20 Shell BMW M Hybrid V8, 4th place): “It was the goal to be in the top-five, and in the end we are in P4. That means we are a bit out of the jungle at the start, which is good. My laptimes were pretty far off. I wasn’t so happy with my runs in Hyperpole 2. I’m not where I should be, so we need to see where we can improve for the race.”

Sean Gelael (Team WRT, #32 BMW M4 GT3 EVO, 5th place LMGT3): “It‘s probably one of the best positions to start the big 24-hour race from. Third row, the slip stream in front of us – that’s good! We are happy, and we are where we want to be for the start of the race.”

Parker Thompson (Team WRT, #69 BMW M4 GT3 EVO, 6th place LMGT3): “Overall a very nice job by both sides of the garage at Team WRT. Starting P5 and P6 is a great result for the team and a fantastic place to start the race from. We are out of the areas of chaos at the back. Great job by everybody!”