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Qualifying report

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

Pole winning #18 Porsche Team Porsche 919 Hybrid: Romain Dumas, Neel Jani, Marc Lieb

Porsche AG

#18 Porsche Team Porsche 919 Hybrid: Romain Dumas, Neel Jani, Marc Lieb
Marc Lieb, Neel Jani, Porsche Team
Marc Lieb, Porsche Team
#18 Porsche Team Porsche 919 Hybrid: Romain Dumas, Neel Jani, Marc Lieb
#47 KCMG ORECA 05: Matthew Howson, Richard Bradley, Nick Tandy
#51 AF Corse Ferrari 458 GTE: Gianmaria Bruni, Toni Vilander
#72 SMP RacingMFerrari F458 Italia: Victor Shaytar, Andrea Bertolini, Alexey Basov

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
Romain Dumas
Neel Jani
Marc Lieb
Porsche 1'36.473  
Timo Bernhard
Mark Webber
Brendon Hartley
Porsche 1'36.542 0.069
Lucas di Grassi
Loïc Duval
Oliver Jarvis
Audi 1'37.476 1.003
Marcel Fässler
André Lotterer
Benoît Tréluyer
Audi 1'37.783 1.310
Anthony Davidson
Sébastien Buemi
Kazuki Nakajima
Toyota 1'38.689 2.216
Alexander Wurz
S.Sarrazin
Mike Conway
Toyota 1'39.371 2.898
Nicolas Prost
Mathias Beche
Nick Heidfeld
Rebellion/AER 1'42.513 6.040
A.Imperatori
D.Kraihamer
Daniel Abt
Rebellion/AER 1'42.985 6.512
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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