Dylan Pereira grabs another Zolder pole, and he was the only man under 1:30
One lap in the 1:29s was all it took to settle the front of the grid for a full day of racing.
Dylan Pereira has taken pole position for the 48th 24 Hours of Zolder, and he did it in emphatic style. The Luxembourger put his Ajith-RedAnt Racing Porsche 911 GT3 Cup on top of the timesheets in the Atelier Rebul Superpole with a 1:29.733, the only driver in a field of around 40 cars to dip under the 1:30 barrier, and by more than half a second at that. It is his second consecutive pole for the great Belgian enduro, which starts on Saturday at 16:00.
The pole lap
Pereira knew he had it early. He said he could feel on his outlap that the car was strong and that he had the confidence to attack from the very start of the flying lap, which is exactly what he did. A few spots of rain appeared mid-lap but came to nothing, and a moment at the Thierry Boutsen chicane brought him close to the tyre barrier without unsettling the run. “I felt during my outlap already that the car was good and I had the confidence to attack from the beginning of the lap,” he said, before thanking the team for handing him such a strong car. For a former Porsche Supercup champion, this is the sort of single-lap job that looks routine and very much is not.
A Porsche one-two-three
The chasing pack could not live with that time, and the top of the grid is pure Porsche. Paul Meijer put his Belgium Racing car second, 0.523 seconds adrift, with Glenn Van Parijs third for NGT Racing. In a class built around the closely matched 911 GT3 Cup, a gap of over half a second to pole is a significant margin, and it hands Pereira's crew a genuine advantage heading into the longest race on the Belgian calendar.
What is at stake this weekend
Pole is only the beginning of the story here. The 24 Hours of Zolder is the headline round of the Belcar Endurance Championship and pays double points, awarded at the six-hour and twelve-hour marks as well as the finish, so consistency over a full day and night matters far more than one quick lap. Around 40 teams are entered across the GT Cup, GT Sport, Super Sport, Club Sport and Club Challenge classes, a proper cross-section of Belgian club and pro racing, and the event is a genuine institution. It is the same race that has three Belgian sports stars sharing a Mazda MX-5, which tells you plenty about the pull it still has at a circuit fighting to secure its own future.
One car already against the clock
Not everyone made it to Saturday cleanly. The Rush Drivers Collective Chevron GR8 GT3, due to start from the sixth row, was thrown into doubt when mechanics found an engine problem on race day. The team is working flat out to get it ready in time. “The team is doing everything possible to get the car race-ready, but it is a race against time,” said Toon Hungenaert, adding that the goal now is simply to finish. It is a reminder that at Zolder the clock starts working against you well before the race does.
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There is a reason the 24 Hours of Zolder still matters as much as it does. It is one of the jewels of Belgian motorsport, a full day and night of racing on a circuit that rewards commitment, run for a grid that spans serious professionals and dedicated amateurs sharing the same track. Pereira's pole is a genuinely impressive piece of driving, and being the only man under 1:30 is the kind of statement that gets a paddock talking.
But pole at a 24-hour race is a headline, not a result. A day of racing at Zolder is decided by reliability, by clean driver changes, by staying out of trouble in the dark and by whoever is still healthy on Sunday afternoon, which is exactly what makes it such a compelling watch. Pereira has given his team the best possible start. Now they have to do the hard part, which is the other 23 hours and 58 minutes.
