SMP Racing Pushing to Top of the Time Sheets in Portugal

The session resumed with 15 minutes on the clock which saw several cars set their fastest laps of the day before the chequered flag was shown to end the last Free Practice session of the 2014 season. 

The LMGTE title contenders in the no72 Ferrari, Andrea Bertolini, Viktor Shaitar and Sergey Zlobin head into tomorrow's qualifying session in good shape after setting the fastest GT time of the day, a 1m37.712, 0.029 ahead of the no85 Gulf Racing Aston Martin Vantage.  Once again the no72 Ferrari was well ahead of their championship rivals, the no55 AF Corse Ferrari of Matt Griffin, Duncan Cameron and Michele Mugolo.  The Italian team's best lap was a 1m39.151, 1.4 seconds off the pace of their Russian rivals at the head of the field.  With an advantage of 21 points the AF Corse trio have the advantage but they will need to close the gap in qualifying tomorrow morning and the prospect for an exciting race to the LMGTE title is on the cards. 

The no71 SMP Racing Ferrari of Kirill Ladygin, Aleksey Basov and Luca Persiani was the quickest car in GTC with a lap of 1m39.782, 0.2 seconds ahead of the no73 sister car of, and championship leaders, Olivier Beretta, David Markozov and Anton Ladygin.  Their only rivals for the series titles are the all Danish crew of the no60 Formula Racing Ferrari driven by Mikkel Mac, Johnny Laursen and Jan Magnussen, but they could only manage 9th fastest, 1.6 seconds slower than the leading car.

The final qualifying session of the year will take place at 09:30 tomorrow morning, with the 4 Hours of Estoril due to start at 13:30.  Live streaming will be available on the official ELMS website at www.europeanlemansseries.com