Photo: PSP Images

Luigi Ferrara grabs last minute pole in qualifying at Donington

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Roma Racing’s Luigi Ferrara has grabbed a surprise pole position at Donington Park after a troubled run in free practice, qualifying ahead of Romeo Ferraris’ Vitantonio Liuzzi and Team Dinamic BMW driver Giovanni Berton.

Pole position changed hands ten times during the reduced length 25 minute session, which was due to the overrun of the preceding qualifying session for the Auto GP championship.

First, Team Dinamic’s Giovanni Berton set the target pole time of 1:35.746, which was soon bettered by Colin Turkington in the Scuderia Giudici BMW M3, before pole position then alternated between the Mercedes’ of Luigi Ferrara, Vitantonio Liuzzi, Thomas Biagi as well as briefly Audi’s Gianni Morbidelli during the rest of the session.

Liuzzi looked set to keep pole with the first time under 1:34 seen today with a lap time of 1:33.915, but Ferrara was able to improve on his final run after the chequered flag with a time of 1:33.899, just 16-thousandths of a second faster than Liuzzi’s Mercedes C63 AMG.

Ferrara’s pace comes despite a problematic day for the 31-year-old, who missed much of FP1 due to a water pump problem and the whole of FP2 due to an engine failure, which was only just changed ahead of qualifying.

Ferrara’s pole was set whilst Mauro Trentin’s BMW was off in the gravel at Coppice, as was Trentin’s team-mate Giovanni Berton’s final improvement which put him up to third, and both may be subject to review.

Gianni Morbidelli, who is carrying an additional 100kg in success ballast and compensation weight this weekend, was fourth fastest in his Audi Sport Italia RS 5, with championship leader and chief rival Thomas Biagi fifth in the Romeo Ferraris Mercedes C63 AMG.

Colin Turkington, making his Superstars Series debut this weekend with Scuderia Giudici ended up sixth fastest, with Max Mugelli seventh fastest for Team Dinamic BMW, and Dominico Schiattarella eighth in the Solaris Motorsport Chevrolet Lumina, the last driver within a second of Ferrara’s time.

The first race on Sunday is due to start at 11:00 BST.