Round two of the FIA World Endurance Championship kicks of at Spa-Francorchamps tomorrow afternoon in Belgium. Tomorrow’s 6 hour race will be the team’s and driver’s final competitive outing before the series moves to Le Mans next month.
Qualifying was, as ever split in to two parts, LMP1 was on track with LMP2 and GTE-PRO and GTE-PRO were also on track together.
LMP1 saw the #17 Porsche claim their second pole position of the season by breaking the lap record on their way. Once again, Porsche had a car in second position but this time it was the #19 car of Tandy, Hulkenberg and Bamber on their first outing. The #18 Porsche made it a Porsche 1-2-3 overall ahead of the full season Audi duo of the #7 and #8 respectively. Nakajima’s accident in practice yesterday means that Davidson and Buemi were once again a duo in the #1 Toyota. Together, their average lap time was good enough for 6th place ahead of the #2 Toyota TS040 in 7th. The #9 was in 8th position ahead of the #4 ByKolles.
G-Drive racing will start from pole tomorrow in LMP2 with their #26 car ahead of the KCMG effort in second position. The troubled SARD-Morand team came out of the blocks fighting with the third fastest time in class. Behind them the Jota Sport Zytek was fast enough for 5th in class with it’s combined time, although Harry Tincknell set the fastest individual time of the session in LMP2.
Aston Martin were again fast enough to claim pole position in GTE-PRO. The #99 car was fastest of the session with Stanaway and Rees behind the wheel. Second place went to that of the #51 Ferrari. Bruni and Vilander only missed out on the class pole by 0.070 seconds come the end of the session. Although Bruni’s fastest GTE lap of the session wasn’t enough to claim pole, it did knock the #97 car down to third on the gird for tomorrow’s race. The class is tailed by the #91 and #92 Porsche 911s respectively.
Aston Martin also claimed pole position in the GTE-AM category. Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana took pole by over a second to the Larbre Competition Corvette in second place. Christian Ried and Klaus Bachler were third fastest in class in their Abu Dhabi Proton Porsche. The fourth place of the #55 AF Corse Ferrari means that the top 4 positions were claimed by 4 different marques.
The race will get underway tomorrow at 13:30 UK time.
Photos – Walter Schruff (WEC-Magazin)