SRWC: Qualifying results

Tom Coronel made it a double pole for the Netherlands at Monza, when he took front grid spot for Sunday's second round of the SportsRacing World Cup, joining his countryman Mike Hezemans who claimed the FIA GT pole earlier that afternoon.

Coronel, a last minute replacement for his team-mate Jan Lammers, was watching television last night when he was asked to make the trip to Italy. Arriving at 11 am, he took the Konrad Motorsport Lola Ford to pole with a time of 1:52.241.

"That was a really good one," he said of his exploit. "The car was reallydifficult at the beginning, when I was trying to get some heat in my tyres. Then the rain began, and I thought I'd had it. But I pitted for new tyres, and directly felt I had some heat in them, so I went on pushing hard. But it was tricky - under braking, I sometimes couldn't handle the car."

Second place went to Mauro Baldi in the R&M Riley & Scott Judd, nearly a second slower than the Konrad car. Third place went to the GLV Brums Ferrari 333SP, with the Den Bla Avis Panoz Spyder in fourth and the BMS Scuderia Italia Ferrari fifth.

The session did not go quite to plan, according to GLV Brums' manager, Achim Stroth. "Filiberti spun on his warm-up lap," he said. "Then Lavaggi did some good times, but at the end we ran out of fuel. If we'd come in for fuel, we'd have been too late, so we had no real choice." Stroth had been hoping for a wet race tomorrow: "We have really good rain tyres, and Lavaggi is excellent in the wet."

The Motorola DAMS cars came in sixth and seventh. "This is the first time we've been able to run 'normally' - for the last two races, we arrived very late, so this was our first normal test session. We worked on the balance, but it's not perfect yet. And the weather isn't helping matters," Eric Bernard said.

JB Giesse, winners in the first round at Barcelona, came in eighth after a difficult day saw them forced to change the engine, missing most of the free practice sessions. Although Christian Pescatori knows the track, this is the first time David Terrien has driven here, meaning a steep learning curve in tomorrow's race.

The SportsRacing Lights qualifying turned into the expected battle between the Redman Bright Pilbeam and the Tampolli RS2s. After swapping fastest times for much of the session, Werner Lupberger captured pole in the British Pilbeam, with a time of 2:04.294. The BM Autosport Tampolli was second fastest, followed by the Siliprandi Lucchini.

Porsche GT regular Michel Ligonnet is trying a SportsRacing car for the first time at this meeting, driving the Tampolli Engineering RS2 with Peroni. "It's great !" he enthused after setting fourth best time. "Except for the rain - you really get soaked. You're sitting in a couple of inches of water. My friends in the GT championship, sitting nice and dry in their Vipers and Porsches, must really be laughing at me."

Qualifying results

1, Konrad/Colonel (Lola B98) 1:52.241

2, Baldi/Formato (R&S Judd) 1:53.098

3, Lavaggi/Filliberti (Ferrari 333SP) 1:53.116

4, Nielsen/Thyrring (Panoz Spyder LMP) 1:54.754

5, Zadra/Peter (Ferrari 333SP) 1:54.936

6, Bernard/Collard (Cadillac Northstar) 1:55.892

7, Tinseau/Goosens (Cadillac Northstar) 1:56.511

8, Pescatori/Terrien (Ferrari 333SP) 1:57.299

9, Giraudi/Lancelotti (Ferrari 333SP) 1:57.884

10, Calderari/Bryner (Ferrari 333SP) 2:00.353