ROWE Racing led a BMW top-four sweep in this morning's truncated qualifying session at Monza, giving the Bavarian marque its first overall pole since 2013.
The session was delayed due to power cuts at the track, ultimately getting underway at 09:45. Q1 and Q2 were able to proceed as normal, but a further outage shortly before Q3 forced the session to stop early.
It wasn't a case of total BMW dominance, with Henrique Chaves ending Q1 on top in the #188 Garage 59 McLaren. The Portuguese ace posted a 1m46.360s to edge out Augusto Farfus (#46 Team WRT BMW) by 0.036s. The Brazilian was followed by the sister machines of Dan Harper (#998 ROWE Racing) and Philipp Eng (#98 ROWE Racing).
In Q2, the M4 runners took control as Sheldon Van der Linde (#32 Team WRT) and Marco Wittmann (#98 ROWE Racing) set identical times of 1m45.957s. Patric Niederhauser was third quickest in the #25 Saintéloc Junior Team Audi, followed by four more BMWs.
With Q3 unable to proceed, the #98 ROWE Racing entry took pole with an average of 1m46.274s, 0.016s ahead of the #46 Team WRT crew of Farfus/Martin/Rossi. The #32 BMW will start third, followed by the #998 ROWE Racing entry. The #25 Saintéloc Audi was best off the rest and will share the third row with the #63 Iron Lynx Lamborghini.
The #188 Garage 59 McLaren took Bronze Cup pole thanks to Chaves' superb Q1 effort and an equally impressive showing from gentleman driver Miguel Ramos, who was 23rd overall in Q2. The #5 Optimum Motorsport McLaren bagged Gold pole, while Silver and Pro-Am went to Tresor Attempto Racing (#99 Audi) and BMW Italia Ceccato Racing (#15 BMW) respectively.
This afternoon's race is scheduled for a 15:15 start, though this is subject to further change. Follow the Fanatec GT Europe social media channels for the latest news from Monza.