Some sunshine, a few clouds and the great landscape of the Styrian Alpes set the scene for a fantastic day for BWT Lechner Racing: At their home race at the Red Bull Ring near Spielberg, the Austrian squad managed to claim a pink front row lock-out in qualifying for the fourth round of the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup 2022. Dylan Pereira confirmed his nickname “King of the Red Bull Ring” by putting his car on pole position with a time of 1:30.286, less then one tenth of a second ahead of his teammate Harry King.
“Of course I am really, really happy”, the 25-year old from Luxembourg was beaming all over his face. “To be on pole at our home race is so important for everybody, the whole team, the sponsors and partners. I had a great lap, the warm-up of the tyres was perfect, I absolutely hit the peak point and got the lap in. Later I could not improve anymore due to traffic – but luckily this one perfect shot was enough. Of course tomorrow is what really counts, but we are in a great position to make up some valuable ground in the championship with our main competitors starting behind us.”
Even having missed out closely on pole, Harry King was still very content with his performance: “It was a great team effort over the last months with a lot of testing to get to this point and I am glad I could give something back to the team. And I am happy that it is my teammate who is ahead of me, I have a great relationship with him. The two of us combined are much stronger than any other car out there. So I hope tomorrow in the race we can keep the first two positions at the start and then control the race.”
For some time, the three BWT Lechner cars even hold a triple lead, but then Youngster Bastian Buus had two of his fastest laptimes canceled due to track limits, dropping back to P9. But nevertheless the 19-year old Dane was still by far the fastest of the Rookies, and so has a good chance to extend his lead in this championship in Sunday´s race.
BWT Lechner Racing Team Principal and CEO Robert Lechner celebrated the success together with his brother Walter, standing at the pitwall: “It is a very nice feeling that we are able to enjoy this day together. I am very proud of the whole team and our drivers. It was great to watch how they approached this qualifying, they were always able to improve when they had to, which shows what a great atmosphere we currently have in the team, something that is also reflected in our performance. Now we will have to keep our feet on the ground, after qualifying is before the race, but it´s an ideal position to be in to have a pink front row.”