Iron Dames P6 in GTWC Shortened qualifying at Monza

In a qualifying shortened by power outages at the track, Iron Dames had very positive sessions on Sunday morning, setting the fourth and sixth fastest time in Bronze Cup; the all-female trio will start sixth in the 3 hour season opener. Theeba Motorsport's Reema Juffali was the fastest of her team and will start from P12 in class, while Samantha Tan Racing lines up P4 in ProAm.

Photo credits: SRO / Kevin Pecks

Iron Dames will start from sixth place in the Bronze Cup, following a shortened qualifying due to power outages at Monza.

In Q1, Rahel Frey set a highly promising fourth place in class, first among the Lamborghinis in Bronze. Rahel’s 1:47.151 would remain the team’s fastest reference.

Alain Valente was in the #81 Theeba Motorsport’s Mercedes AMG GT4 which he shares with driver/owner Reema Juffali and Ralf Aron.

Valente was eleventh in class in Q1, with a 1:48.013 lap.

In the Samantha Tan Racing with Rinaldi Ferrari 488 GT3, Isaac Tutumlu Lopez went out on track first for the team’s trio and placed the #38 machine in P2 in ProAm class.

In Q2, Sarah Bovy was up next in the Iron Dames Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2; the Belgian driver also had a strong lap, with a 1:47.456 that put them in sixth place in Bronze.

Reema Juffali got behind the wheel in the second session for Theeba Motorsport; the talented Saudi topped her teammate’s time by around one tenth of a second and slotted in P12 in the combined classification.

Samantha Tan was the elected driver for STR, in an incredibly close ProAm class where the top four were separated by thousands of a second. Samantha was fourth fastest in class.

A power outage interrupted the action just before the start of Q3. The issue had already delayed the start of qualifying and had been affecting the whole Monza weekend.

Eventually, the whole Q3 was cancelled and the grid for the season opener in the GTWC Europe Endurance Cup will be set based on the combined lap times from the first two sessions: Iron Dames will be starting from P6 in Bronze, with Theeba Motorsport lining up in P12 and Samantha Tan Racing in fourth place in ProAm.

Initially, the series had announced that Saturday’s Pre-Qualifying would set the grid – which would have put Iron Dames in P10, Theeba Motorsport in P15 and ST Racing in P4. The decision was reverted back to the combined lap times from the two sessions that did go underway.

In the overall classification, BMW dominated the field, with four cars from the Bavarian brand in the top four. The #98 Rowe Racing BMW M4 GT3 claimed pole position, ahead of the #46 and #32 Team WRT cars. The #25 Sainteloc Junior Team Audi was the first non-BMW machine in fifth. With a remarkable Q1, the #188 Garage 59 McLaren driven by Henrique Chaves secured pole position in the Bronze Cup.

The schedule delay means that the first race of the season will go green at 15:15 local time.