WEC: Ferrari starts from pole position in the first race of the season

      Qatar will host the first stage of the endurance racing season this weekend, and today qualifying took place at the Losail circuit, which was won by the crew of the Ferrari factory team.

      Shortly before the end of the 10-minute final session, the so–called "Hyperpowl," Antonio Giovinazzi drove a lap in a Ferrari 499P sports prototype in 1:38.359 - his time was 0.136 seconds better than Dries Ventura, the Belgian BMW driver and team-mate Kevin Magnussen.

      Ferrari representative Antonio Fuoco also scored the third result in hypercar No. 50, while two Cadillacs, piloted by Alex Lynn and Sebastian Bourdais, were on the fourth and fifth lines of the protocol.

      Robin Frijns, BMW driver, and Nick DeVries, Toyota driver, scored 6th and 7th respectively. He was the only representative of the factory team of the Japanese concern who managed to qualify for the finals. Brendon Hartley made a mistake in the very first qualifying session, his Toyota spun around, which is why he dropped out of further competition and will start from 17th position.

      On the 8th line of the qualifying protocol is Polish Formula 1 veteran Robert Kubica in a Ferrari 499P of the AF Corse team, ahead of Charles Milesi, an Alpine racer, and Jean-Eric Vergne in a Peugeot 9X8, who rounded out the top ten participants of the Hyperpowl.

      A couple more points deserve to be mentioned: after the first stage of qualifying, both Porsche hypercars, Alpine team car No. 46 (Mick Schumacher's crew) and WEC debutants, two Aston Martin Valkyrie cars, dropped out of the further struggle.

      In the LMGT3 category, the first two results were shown by the crews of United Autosports, the team of Zach Brown, driving McLaren 720S GT3 Evo sports cars, with Sean Gelael ahead of Sebastien Boda.

      The 1812 km of Qatar race starts on Friday at 14.00 local time.