Home boy Ortelli takes Monaco Supercup pole

The Monegasque is hoping to repeat his success from last year's Monte Carlo round, where he swept the board by taking pole, fastest lap and race victory. By posting pole today, 31-year-old Ortelli broke Jorg Bergmeister's streak of three poles from three rounds.

"It's great to be the fastest here again," said Ortelli. "It proves that my pole position time last year was no fluke. I love my home circuit. It's a real driver's track just like Spa. I'm confident that tomorrow my car will be perfectly set-up so that I can be fast from the first to the last lap."

The two frontrunning team mates Jorg Bergmeister, currently ranking second overall, and points leader Marco Werner both suffered bad starts to their Supercup weekend. Werner touched the barriers at the exit of the Tabac corner and will start Sunday's race from 10th on the grid. Bergmeister went off at the swimming pool chicane, but had already secured fifth on the grid.

"Today was not my day," said Bergmeister. "First I couldn't get in a fast lap, and then when I finally got a free run I drove over the kerb at the swimming pool and my car became unstable and I hit the barriers. The car's okay but my qualifying came to an abrupt end."

Werner said: "Maybe I overdid things a bit and was rewarded with a rendezvous with the barriers in Tabac. The scratch on my Porsche is not so bad, but the toe-in is affected."

British racers Jamie Hunter and Ian Khan were 13th and 24th respectively.


1 Staphane Ortelli (Kadach Tuning) 1m42.197s
2 Sascha Maassen (Software AG Racing) +0.098s
3 Wolf Henzler (Manthey Racing) +0.527s
4 Alessandro Zampedri (Kadach Tuning) +0.816s
5 Jorg Bergmeister (Infineon Team Farnbacher) +0.855s
6 Philipp Peter (Infineon Team Farnbacher) +0.979s
7 Oliver Mathai (Manthey Racing) +0.985s
8 Ralf Kelleners (PZ Rhein-Oberberg) +1.045s
9 Pedro Couceiro (PZ Rhein-Oberberg) +1.229s
10 Marco Werner (Infineon Team Farnbacher) +1.366s