History repeated itself, and history was made, on Saturday afternoon at Laguna Seca when Daniel Serra drove the no. 68 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GTE to pole position in GT-LeMans.
Serra’s pole position was the first for the Ferrari 488 GTE in North America, and the fifth for the team in IMSA competition since its debut in 2012 at Laguna Seca. Scuderia Corsa captured the first GT-Daytona pole position and first victory for the Ferrari 488 GT3 in North America in last month’s 12 Hours of Sebring.
The battle for pole position was decided only as the checkered flag flew for the 15-minute qualifying session. Serra had held first place early in the session, but was bumped down the order as the session wore on. In his final three laps, he improved to second, then to first by 0.079-sec as he crossed the finish line for the final time to beat the Ford GT. Serra’s pole-winning performance came in front of a large crowd of supporters from nearby Ferrari Silicon Valley as well as Scuderia Corsa partners.
“It was a very good lap,” said Serra. “Each lap, the car was getting better and better and I was gaining confidence in the car. After we had such a difficult weekend at Long Beach, it is great to get such a positive result so quickly especially with this being such an important weekend for Scuderia Corsa and Ferrari Silicon Valley. Tomorrow’s race will be very challenging with such strong competition and a high amount of tire degradation, but we are looking forward to the challenge.”
In qualifying for the GT-Daytona class, Christina Nielsen drove the no. 63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3 to the second starting position for tomorrow’s race. It was Nielsen’s best career qualifying performance, and it comes one race after she and teammate Alessandro Balzan scored the victory at the 12 Hours of Sebring.
“I had no idea what to expect,” Nielsen said. “We had some very different conditions that we qualified in today. The team gave me an awesome car. I had a few mistakes, so I didn’t get the perfect lap. But it is so hard to get the perfect lap around Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. It’s a really difficult track, but I am super happy.”
On Scuderia Corsa’s debut in 2013, Alessandro Balzan also scored a pole position at Laguna Seca in a Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 458 Italia. Today’s qualifying performance marked another milestone for the team.
“This is such a great day for Scuderia Corsa,” said Giacomo Mattioli, Scuderia Corsa team owner. “In a way, it is history repeating itself with another pole position for our team here at Laguna Seca, the home track for Scuderia Corsa, Ferrari Silicon Valley, and many of our partners. We really owe the performances today to Daniel and Christina, who did an amazing job to get the speed out of the cars today. Alessandro Balzan brought us our first pole position here in our first race, and now Daniel has brought us our first pole position in GT-LeMans. We now have two exciting races to look forward to tomorrow!”
The first race on Sunday, featuring the GT-LeMans class, will be broadcast live at 2:00 PM ET on FOX Sports 1. The second race, featuring the GT-Daytona class, will be broadcast live at 6:30 PM ET on FOX Sports 2. A rebroadcast will be shown Monday, May 2 at 12:30 AM ET.