Loic Duval and Lucas Di Grassi scored the #8 Audi pole position for tomorrow’s Six Hours of Fuji with a combined time of 1:23.570, just 0.025 ahead of the challenging #1 Porsche 919 of Mark Webber and Timo Bernhard.
In the session, which was mostly clean aside from a brief yellow, the three manufacturers traded fast times, but in the end it would be Audi which would emerge the quickest, taking its fifth pole of the season.
Starting third for the race will be the first of the two Toyotas, the #5, after Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Kakajima ended up with their combined time less than two tenths off pole, marking the closest spread of the three manufacturers’ fastest cars in WEC qualifying history. In fact just half a second separated all six hybrid LMP1 cars.
The slowest of the runners was the championship leaders in the #2 919, as Neel Jani and Marc Lieb could only manage a 1:24.134 after their efforts in perfec conditions at the circuit, coming in behind the #6 Toyota and #7 Audi in fourth and fifth.
In LMP1 L, Rebellion once again had the edge on the ByKolles CLM. The R-One’s combined time was a 1:28.837.
In LMP2 G-Drive Racing scored its fifth pole position of 2016, with Will Stevens and Romain Rusinov managing to set a 1:31.698 together, just a fraction over two tenths up on the #36 Alpine and RGR Sport by Morand Ligier which rounded out the top three.
It seemed that the Strakka Racing Gibson would be able to grab a top three spot, though a late spin by Jonny Kane prevented the British team from putting in a final flyer. Strakka will start from an encouraging fourth however, with a 1:32.007 behind the #30 ESM Ligier. The average of 1:31.935 from Sean Gelael and Antonio Giovanazzi was particularly impressive.
Bookending the top five in the class was the RGR Sport by Morand Ligier, just four tenths off Stevens and Rusinov’s pole time.
Meanwhile in GTE Pro, it was a first pole position for the UK Ford squad with Olivier Pla and Stefan Mucke guiding the #66 to Ford’s first pole position in the WEC.
Pla’s best lap 1:37.546 was also the best lap of the session by 0.2 second and together with Mucke’s 1:37.817 to give an average time of 1:37.681 verses 1:37.275 for the second place runners.
It was the sister #67 Ford of Andy Priaulx, who started the session with Harry Tincknell jumping in to set the second lap. They both were in the 1:37.7s, with only Sam Bird’s AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE. The rest of the GTE Pro field was in the 1:38s, showing the speed of the Ford this weekend.
The two AF Corse entries followed the Fords, with the #71 leading the #51. Both had minor issues throughout the session with Gianmaria Bruni running wide and were the last team to set their second lap time after returning to the pits to check that issue.
The field was closed out by the #95 Aston Martin, the #97 Aston Martin and the #77 Dempsey Proton Porsche.
Finally, in GTEAm, Aston Martin took pole with Pedro Lamy leading the charge, setting his opening lap time of 1:38.982 with Paul Dalla Lana coming in on 1:39.998 to set an average time of 1:39.490.
They were 0.473 ahead of the AF Corse entry and a further 0.123 back to the Larbre Competition Corvette with Ricky Taylor and local driver Yataka Yamagishi behind the wheel.
Lamy was the only driver to dip into the 1:38 bracket with Ricky Taylor setting the second fastest time in the class on 1:39.140.
Tomorrow’s Six Hours of Fuji is set to start at 11:00am local time in Japan.
