Max Verstappen and his team-mates Chris Lulham and Ben Barnicoat have a mountain to climb after qualifying only 15th for the GT World Challenge race at Portimao, as The Race reports. Contesting this outing during his break between Formula 1 races, the Dutchman's return to the GT scene immediately proved eventful when he tapped Ezequiel Perez Companc's Audi into a spin during a morning practice traffic jam.
The stewards reviewed the contact but ultimately took no action against Verstappen. By the time the second practice session drew to a close, the Verstappen crew had climbed up to fourth on the timesheets.
So we tried a couple of things there and obviously it didn't quite work out - lots of sparking, a lot of bouncing in a straight line, so I think we just missed it a little bit.
Unfortunately, the momentum did not carry over into qualifying. Running under the twilight sky, their Mercedes was visibly lower than most of the competition, kicking up abundant sparks as they scrambled for pace on the massive 61-car grid.
Ben Barnicoat offered a realistic assessment of the session, calling 15th a "could be worse" situation while openly admitting that the 2 Seas Motorsport-run squad had taken a wrong turn with their set-up.
"We felt like we'd been missing a little bit of speed - we've been quite high up the timesheets but none of us were super happy," Barnicoat explained. "So we tried a couple of things there and obviously it didn't quite work out - lots of sparking, a lot of bouncing in a straight line, so I think we just missed it a little bit."
At the sharp end of the grid, the Boutsen VDS Porsche driven by Dorian Boccalacci, Morris Schuring and Alessio Picariello secured pole position. The three-hour race is scheduled to get underway at 5pm local time on Saturday.
