Audi dominated qualifying for the 6 Hours of COTA, locking out the front row in Austin as Porsche struggled to match its raw pace in warm conditions.

After topping all the practice sessions, the #8 R18 – qualified by Lucas di Grassi and Oliver Jarvis – had to settle for second behind the pole-winning #7 car of Marcel Fassler and Andre Lotterer.

Despite losing Fassler’s quickest lap due to exceeding its energy limit, Lotterer produced a stunning 1m45.7s effort to give the car an average laptime of 1m45.842s – 0.141s quicker than the #8.

Porsche took third on the grid with the #1 919 Hybrid qualified by Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley, but there was a shock when its #2 car lost fourth place late on when Romain Dumas had his quickest lap deleted for exceeding track limits.

That handed fourth position to the #6 Toyota of Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi, the duo dragging absolutely everything from their car to scalp one of the Porsches by a tenth.

The #5 Toyota will start sixth, after Sebastien Buemi had a couple of laps deleted, with the Rebellion outpacing the ByKolles CLM in the battle of the non-hybrids.

The points-leading #36 Signatech Alpine scored its first LMP2 pole of the season thanks to Gustavo Menezes and Nicolas Lapierre.

The #44 Manor Oreca will start second, but the big news here was #26 G-Drive’s disastrous session – all of Alex Brundle’s timed laps were deleted for exceeding track limits, so although co-driver Roman Rusinov was third fastest, it mattered not.

The RGR Sport by Morand Ligier will start third instead.

Aston heads GT classes

Aston Martin continued its successful streak from Mexico, with Marco Sorensen and Nicki Thiim edging a narrow GTE Pro pole position by 0.042s from the #71 Ferrari of Davide Rigon and Sam Bird.

The #66 Ford of Stefan Mucke and Olivier Pla will start third, ahead of the #51 Ferrari.

In GTE Am, Paul Dalla Lana and Pedro Lamy topped the class to give Aston even more cheer, ahead of the #88 Porsche.

Austin LMP qualifying

Pos	Drivers	Car	Time	Gap
1	Andre Lotterer Marcel Fassler Benoit Tréluyer	Audi R18	1'45.842
2	Lucas di Grassi Loic Duval Oliver Jarvis	Audi R18	1'45.983	0.141
3	Mark Webber Timo Bernhard Brendon Hartley	Porsche 919 Hybrid	1'46.560	0.718
4	Stéphane Sarrazin Kamui Kobayashi Mike Conway	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	1'47.218	1.376
5	Romain Dumas Neel Jani Marc Lieb	Porsche 919 Hybrid	1'47.331	1.489
6	Anthony Davidson Kazuki Nakajima Sébastien Buemi	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	1'48.584	2.742
7	Alexandre Imperatori Dominik Kraihamer Matheo Tuscher	Rebellion R-One	1'53.646	7.804
8	Simon Trummer Oliver Webb Pierre Kaffer	CLM P1/01	1'54.577	8.735
9	Nicolas Lapierre Gustavo Menezes Stéphane Richelmi	Alpine A460	1'55.892	10.050
10	Roberto Merhi Richard Bradley Matthew Rao	Oreca 05	1'56.873	11.031
11	Bruno Senna Ricardo Gonzalez Filipe Albuquerque	Ligier JS P2	1'57.367	11.525
12	Nick Leventis Jonny Kane Lewis Williamson	Gibson 015S	1'57.536	11.694
13	Nelson Panciatici Ho-Pin Tung David Cheng	Alpine A460	1'58.060	12.218
14	Vitaly Petrov Viktor Shaytar Kirill Ladygin	BR01	1'58.379	12.537
15	Pipo Derani Ryan Dalziel Chris Cumming	Ligier JS P2	1'58.394	12.552
16	Maurizio Mediani Nicolas Minassian	BR01	1'58.769	12.927
17	Scott Sharp Ed Brown Johannes van Overbeek	Ligier JS P2	2'00.631	14.789
NC	Roman Rusinov René Rast Alex Brundle	Oreca 05	1'57.208	11.366

Austin GT qualifying

Pos	Drivers	Car	Time	Gap
1	Marco Sorensen Nicki Thiim	Aston Martin Vantage V8	2'04.610
2	Sam Bird Davide Rigon	Ferrari 488 GTE	2'04.652	0.042
3	Stefan Mücke Olivier Pla	Ford GT	2'04.804	0.194
4	Gianmaria Bruni James Calado	Ferrari 488 GTE	2'04.821	0.211
5	Darren Turner Fernando Rees	Aston Martin Vantage V8	2'04.889	0.279
6	Harry Tincknell Andy Priaulx Marino Franchitti	Ford GT	2'05.057	0.447
7	Richard Lietz Michael Christensen	Porsche 911 RSR (2016)	2'06.060	1.450
8	Pedro Lamy Paul Dalla Lana Mathias Lauda	Aston Martin Vantage V8	2'07.683	3.073
9	David Heinemeier Hansson Khaled Al Qubaisi Kevin Estre	Porsche 911 RSR	2'08.295	3.685
10	Christian Ried Wolf Henzler Joel Camathias	Porsche 911 RSR	2'08.816	4.206
11	Michael Wainwright Adam Carroll Ben Barker	Porsche 911 RSR	2'09.119	4.509
12	François Perrodo Emmanuel Collard Rui Aguas	Ferrari F458 Italia	2'09.187	4.577
13	Pierre Ragues Ricky Taylor Lars Viljoen	Chevrolet Corvette C7-Z06	2'09.190	4.580