Perera claims BES pole at Silverstone

Former GP2 driver Franck Perera claimed pole position for Sunday's round of the Blancpain Endurance Championship at Silverstone.

The Frenchman topped the times over the three 15-minute qualifying sessions with a 2m00.912s lap set in the final period aboard his Almeras Porsche 911 GT3-R. This put him 0.151 seconds ahead of Alvaro Parente, who led the ART McLaren team to victory in the BES opener at Monza in May.

Perera, who runs in the Pro-Am class with countryman Eric Dermont, said: "We were pretty good here last year and qualified P5 and we raced here one month ago with the European Le Mans Series."

Parente, who shares his McLaren MP4-12C with Alex Premat and Gregoire Demoustier, just edged out the best of the RJN Nissans for the second spot on the front row.

The Portuguese shaded Alex Buncombe's fastest time in the Nissan GT-R NISMO by just one hundredth of a second. Bentley took fourth spot with Steve Kane, whose Continental GT3 was a further tenth and a half back on 2m01.214s.