Jota takes another ELMS pole

Harry Tincknell maintained the British Jota Sport team's unbeaten run of pole positions in the 2014 European Le Mans Series at the Red Bull Ring.

Tincknell, who set pole for the team at the Silverstone series opener in April, produced three laps good enough to top the timesheets aboard the Jota Zytek-Nissan Z11SN LMP2 during the 20-minute qualifying session ahead of Sunday afternoon's race.

The Briton ended up on a 1m23.078s, which put him nearly half a second ahead of the Race Performance ORECA-Judd/BMW 03 driven by Franck Mailleux.

Tincknell, who shares the Zytek with Filipe Albuquerque and Simon Dolan, said: "We've certainly got the qualifying performance down to a tee and we are very happy to maintain our 100 per cent record for poles."

Mailleux set his time of 1m23.561s after the checkered flag had fallen to knock Tristan Gommendy off the front row in the TDS Racing Ligier-Nissan JSP2 by just half a tenth. Local driver Christian Klien ended up fourth in the Morand Racing Morgan-Judd/BMW LMP2 a further tenth back.

GTE honors went to the Franco-Russian SMP Racing Ferrari 458 Italia driven by Andrea Bertolini. The Ferrari factory driver ended up just over two tenths of a second ahead of Richard Lietz, who is making a one-off appearance in the series with the Proton Competition Porsche squad.

Corvette Racing regular Jan Magnussen returned to the ELMS after one race away to set his second pole of the year in the GTC class Ferrari fielded by the Danish Formula Racing team.