Nurburgring WEC: Porsche lock out front row
The Porsche #18 car will start from pole position on home ground for tomorrow’s fourth round of the FIA World Endurance Championship at Nurburgring.
Pole winning #18 Porsche Team Porsche 919 Hybrid: Romain Dumas, Neel Jani, Marc Lieb
Porsche AG
Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb ensured Porsche’s 100% pole record in 2015 remained intact as their two lap average of 1m36.473s was enough to ward off the advances of team-mates Mark Webber and Timo Bernhard in the #17 919 Hybrid.
Dumas was the star of the session, setting an outright fastest lap of 1m36.192s in the early stages.
Audi was again forced to settle for the second row in qualifying and ended up just over a second adrift of the outright pace. Lucas di Grassi and Oliver Jarvis in the #8 Audi R18 e-tron quattro headed Andre Lotterer and Marcel Fassler in the #7 machine by just under 0.3s.
Toyota was slightly nearer the pace in qualifying but remained in their customary fifth and sixth positions. The #1 TS 040 led the #2 car, which began the session with Alex Wurz just surviving a lurid gravelly moment at the final chicane.
KCMG continued its Le Mans-winning form by claiming a second pole in as many races. The Hong Kong entered team took the best average away from the #26 G-Drive Ligier Nissan in the final minutes. Nick Tandy made the difference in the blue ORECA-Nissan and was able to lap faster than the similarly rapid Sam Bird.
LMGTE Pro saw reigning champions AF Corse claim a front-row lockout as Toni Vilander and Gianmaria Bruni set a best average of 1m54.275s to claim the class pole position.
Bruni and Vilander’s stablemates at the Prancing Horse – James Calado and Davide Rigon in the #71 AF Corse car - were just 0.055s in arrears. Third in class was the leading Aston Martin, driven by the Danish pairing of Marco Sorensen and Christoffer Nygaard.
The #72 SMP Racing Ferrari 458 Italia made it a fine day for Maranello’s finest as Victor Shaytar and Alexei Basov ensured the car will start from the LMGTE Am class pole. An average best two laps of 1m56.528s was good enough for the top spot.
The #98 Aston Martin Racing trio of Paul Dalla Lana, Pedro Lamy and Mathias Lauda suffered more issues when their Vantage V8 ground to a halt in the dying moments of the session. They will, however, from second in class as they look to claim their third class win of the season after previous successes at Silverstone and Spa.
Tomorrow’s 6 Hours of Nurburgring is scheduled to start at 13.00 local time.
Pos | Driver | Team | Time | Gap |
1 | Romain Dumas Neel Jani Marc Lieb |
Porsche | 1'36.473 | |
2 | Timo Bernhard Mark Webber Brendon Hartley |
Porsche | 1'36.542 | 0.069 |
3 | Lucas di Grassi Loïc Duval Oliver Jarvis |
Audi | 1'37.476 | 1.003 |
4 | Marcel Fässler André Lotterer Benoît Tréluyer |
Audi | 1'37.783 | 1.310 |
5 | Anthony Davidson Sébastien Buemi Kazuki Nakajima |
Toyota | 1'38.689 | 2.216 |
6 | Alexander Wurz S.Sarrazin Mike Conway |
Toyota | 1'39.371 | 2.898 |
7 | Nicolas Prost Mathias Beche Nick Heidfeld |
Rebellion/AER | 1'42.513 | 6.040 |
8 | A.Imperatori D.Kraihamer Daniel Abt |
Rebellion/AER | 1'42.985 | 6.512 |
9 | Simon Trummer Pierre Kaffer |
CLM/AER | 1'44.886 | 8.413 |
10 | Matt Howson Richard Bradley Nick Tandy |
ORECA/Nissan | 1'46.132 | 9.659 |
11 | Roman Rusinov Julien Canal Sam Bird |
Ligier/Nissan | 1'46.505 | 10.032 |
12 | N.Panciatici Paul-Loup Chatin V.Capillaire |
Alpine/Nissan | 1'47.174 | 10.701 |
13 | Gustavo Yacamán Luis Derani Ricardo González |
Ligier/Nissan | 1'47.179 | 10.706 |
14 | Pierre Ragues Oliver Webb Archie Hamilton |
Morgan/SARD | 1'47.572 | 11.099 |
15 | Nick Leventis Danny Watts Jonny Kane |
Dome/Nissan | 1'48.250 | 11.777 |
16 | Scott Sharp Ryan Dalziel David Hansson |
Ligier/HPD | 1'48.342 | 11.869 |
17 | Ed Brown J.van Overbeek Jon Fogarty |
Ligier/HPD | 1'50.594 | 14.121 |
18 | Gianmaria Bruni Toni Vilander |
Ferrari | 1'54.275 | 17.802 |
19 | Davide Rigon James Calado |
Ferrari | 1'54.330 | 17.857 |
20 | Marco Sørensen C.Nygaard |
Aston Martin | 1'54.498 | 18.025 |
21 | Patrick Pilet F.Makowiecki |
Porsche | 1'54.688 | 18.215 |
22 | Richard Lietz M.Christensen |
Porsche | 1'54.729 | 18.256 |
23 | Fernando Rees Alex MacDowall Richie Stanaway |
Aston Martin | 1'54.933 | 18.460 |
24 | Darren Turner Stefan Mücke Jonathan Adam |
Aston Martin | 1'55.387 | 18.914 |
25 | Viktor Shaitar Andrea Bertolini Aleksey Basov |
Ferrari | 1'56.528 | 20.055 |
26 | Paul Dalla Lana Pedro Lamy Mathias Lauda |
Aston Martin | 1'57.060 | 20.587 |
27 | Patrick Dempsey Patrick Long Marco Seefried |
Porsche | 1'57.232 | 20.759 |
28 | François Perrodo Emmanuel Collard Rui Águas |
Ferrari | 1'57.246 | 20.773 |
29 | Christian Ried K.Al Qubaisi Earl Bamber |
Porsche | 1'57.563 | 21.090 |
30 | Gianluca Roda Paolo Ruberti Kristian Poulsen |
Chevrolet | 1'57.647 | 21.174 |
31 | F.Castellacci Roald Goethe Stuart Hall |
Aston Martin | 1'59.993 | 23.520 |
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