Earl Bamber Motorsport’s Indianapolis 8-Hour entry, which features Kiwi Brendon Leitch, factory Porsche driver Bastian Buus, and Adrian D’Silva will start from 18th in tomorrow’s endurance race on the IMS Road Course.
A three-part qualifying format determined the provisional grid, with all three drivers getting a 15-minute run to establish an average time. From there, the top ten teams progressed to a Pole Shootout.
D’Silva was the first to qualify EBM’s #61 Porsche 911 GT3 R 992, and set a best effort of 1:27.05, which was 23rd fastest.
Leitch took the second run and bounced back with a quick 1:23.644, which was fifth fastest in his group, one place to the good of Triple Eight’s Jordan Love and just 0.148 off the fastest time of the session. The Kiwi’s effort moved the team up to 19th ahead of the final session.
A 1:23.449 from Buus completed EBM’s qualifying effort and gave the team an additional spot and put them 18th.
Patric Niederhauser’s rapid opening lap in the Pole Shootout was enough to seal top spot for Herberth Motorsport and Porsche.
The Swiss set a blistering 1m22.564s to beat the impressive IndyCar champion Alex Palou (Lone Star Racing) to top spot by 0.114s, while 2023 pole winner Laurin Heinrich (Wright Motorsports) completed the first three.
Triple Eight’s Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Jefri Ibrahim, Jordan Love & Arjun Maini will start fifth, with the latter’s 1:22.919 in the shootout only one-tenth off the second row.
75 Express’s Mercedes-AMG GT3, which features Australians Jayden Ojeda and Kenny Habul with Lucas Auer, lines up 11th, having missed progressing to the Pole Shootout by just 0.025 seconds.
The Indianapolis 8-Hour begins at 5.15 pm NZST on Sunday and will be shown via a free live stream on YouTube.
Header Image: Earl Bamber Motorsport
