After taking pole position at Le Mans thanks to a stewards decision to delete Jack Aitken’s best lap in the #38 Cadillac, the on-track polesitter, thanks to a rules infringement, Dries Vanthoor told Motorsport Week that he or BMW were not expecting to be able to fight for pole.
“Super happy. Super stoked,” said the Belgian.
“I didn’t really expect to fight for pole today. I mean, obviously we knew we had a good car in FP3. We had a had a good first lap. And then, obviously your feeling starts to… I was ahead by a second after the first push lap.
“So I felt that the car was very good, but then now to have this, I think it’s just super, super nice for the whole team, for everybody working. I think it’s so nice for everyone.”
In Hyperpole 1, Raffaele Marciello got the #15 BMW through into pole shoot out that would take place in Hyperpole 2, where Vanthoor would take the car over to go for pole.
He set an initial Hyperpole 2 lap of 3:22.745, which for the majority of the session was the quickest time on the board. Indeed, no one could get close, with his nearest competition, in the form of his teammate Robin Frijns in the sister #20 BMW, 1.170 seconds adrift.
The second half of the session saw him further improve this time to a 3.22.564, but Aitken crossed the line in the dying moments of the 15 minutes to take pole by 0.005.
However, it wasn’t to be for Cadillac: they had released Aitken too early into the ‘fast lane’ of the pit lane, thereby not following the race director’s instructions. This meant the #38 Cadillac’s fastest lap, the 3:22.559, was deleted, elevating Vanthoor to pole.
However, Vanthoor believes he could have found even more time in the car.
“I made a mistake in the last chicane,” he said.
“I lost two tenths in the last chicane, which probably would… I would have got it pole as well if I wouldn’t have made that mistake. But yeah obviously I made that mistake. But at the end of the day I got it, so I’m super happy with it.”
Looking forward to the race, Vanthoor is confident BMW have a good race car underneath them.
“I think we we’ve got a good race car. I think we do still need to fine tune quite a bit, but I think we are for sure in the mix,” he concluded.
READ MORE: BMW’s Frijns: Cadillac are ‘the team to look at’ for Le Mans