Silverstone WEC: Toyota locks out front row in qualifying

Mike Conway outpaced Fernando Alonso in the #8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid in the first runs by just two hundredths of a second before Jose Maria Lopez went eight tenths quicker than Kazuki Nakajima.

That gave Conway and Lopez a 1m36.895s average, which compared with 1m37.306s for Alonso and Nakajima.

The Briton set his 1m36.769s, which stood as the fastest lap of the session, on his second run after aborting his first go at a time.

Conway said: "It's nice to get a pole after losing one at Spa [to a technical infringement]. I made a mistake starting the lap and another in Turn 4 [the Loop], so aborted the lap and went again.

"I was conservative on track limits, but fortunately it was enough."

The 1m37.362s lap Nakajima lost to a track limits violation wouldn't have altered the order at the top of the timesheets.

The Toyotas ended up more than two seconds clear of the best of the non-hybrid privateer LMP1s, as Vitaly Petrov and Jenson Button took third in the best of SMP Racing's AER-powered BR Engineering BR1s.

Their average of 1m38.932s was seven tenths up on that of the sister car driven by Stephane Sarrazin and Egor Orudzhev.

The two Rebellion-Gibson R-13s took fifth and sixth positions, Mathias Beche and Gustavo Menezes beating teammates Neel Jani and Andre Lotterer by three tenths, ahead of the DragonSpeed BR1 and the ByKolles ENSO CLM P1/01.

The Jota Sport-run Jackie Chan DC Racing squad blocked out the top two positions in LMP2.

Jazeman Jaafar and Nabil Jeffri took the class pole in the #37 Oreca 07 with a 1m44.896s average, which was just over a tenth ahead of teammates Stephane Richelmi and Gabriel Aubry.

The Signatech Alpine Oreca took third, a further three tenths in arrears, with Nicolas Lapierre and Pierre Thiriet.

Stefan Mucke and Olivier Pla claimed the GTE Pro class pole for Ford by just over a tenth from a resurgent Aston Martin.

Mucke topped the times in the first runs with 1m55.727s in the #66 Ganassi Ford GT, before Pla followed it up with a 1m55.796s.

That gave them an average of 1m55.727s, which was just clear of the new Aston Martin Vantage GTE shared by Alex Lynn and Maxime Martin.

The two Aston drivers were separated by under a tenth on their way to a 1m55.805s average, while the second Vantage driven by Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen was three tenths behind on 1m56.103s.

The second of the Ganassi Fords ended up fourth on a 1m56.204s in the hands of Andy Priaulx and Harry Tincknell.

Porsche drivers Michael Christensen and Kevin Estre took fifth ahead of Ferrari pairing Sam Bird and Davide Rigon, with Augusto Farfus and Antonio Felix da Costa ending up seventh in the best of the BMWs.

The GTE Am pole was taken the Project 1 Porsche 911 RSR driven by Jorg Bergmeister and Egidio Perfetti.

The WEC 6 Hours of Silverstone will be streamed live on Motorsport.tv from 11am GMT on Sunday.

LMP results:

Pos.	#	Drivers	Car	Class	Time	Avg. Gap
1	7	Kamui Kobayashi Mike Conway Jose Maria Lopez	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	LMP1	1'36.895
2	8	Fernando Alonso Kazuki Nakajima Sébastien Buemi	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	LMP1	1'37.306	0.411
3	11	Jenson Button Vitaly Petrov Mikhail Aleshin	BR Engineering BR1	LMP1	1'38.932	2.037
4	17	Stéphane Sarrazin Egor Orudzhev	BR Engineering BR1	LMP1	1'39.070	2.175
5	3	Mathias Beche Thomas Laurent Gustavo Menezes	Rebellion R13	LMP1	1'39.247	2.352
6	1	Andre Lotterer Neel Jani	Rebellion R13	LMP1	1'39.613	2.718
7	10	Henrik Hedman Renger van der Zande Ben Hanley	BR Engineering BR1	LMP1	1'41.412	4.517
8	4	Oliver Webb Rene Binder	ENSO CLM P1/01	LMP1	1'41.839	4.944
9	37	Nabil Jeffri Weiron Tan Jazeman Jaafar	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'44.896	8.001
10	38	Ho-Pin Tung Stéphane Richelmi Gabriel Aubry	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'45.083	8.188
11	36	Nicolas Lapierre Pierre Thiriet Andre Negrao	Alpine A470	LMP2	1'46.370	9.475
12	28	Loic Duval François Perrodo Matthieu Vaxiviere	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'47.048	10.153
13	29	Giedo van der Garde Nyck de Vries Frits van Eerd	Dallara P217	LMP2	1'47.107	10.212
14	31	Anthony Davidson Pastor Maldonado Roberto Gonzalez	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'47.270	10.375
15	50	Romano Ricci Erwin Creed Yoshiharu Mori	Ligier JSP 217	LMP2	1'49.489	12.594

GTE results:

Pos.	#	Drivers	Car	Class	Avg. Time	Gap
1	66	Stefan Mücke Olivier Pla	Ford GT	LMGTE PRO	1'55.727
2	97	Maxime Martin Alex Lynn	Aston Martin Vantage AMR	LMGTE PRO	1'55.805	0.078
3	95	Marco Sorensen Nicki Thiim	Aston Martin Vantage AMR	LMGTE PRO	1'56.103	0.376
4	67	Harry Tincknell Andy Priaulx	Ford GT	LMGTE PRO	1'56.204	0.477
5	92	Michael Christensen Kevin Estre	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE PRO	1'56.446	0.719
6	71	Sam Bird Davide Rigon	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	LMGTE PRO	1'56.510	0.783
7	82	Antonio Felix da Costa Augusto Farfus	BMW M8 GTE	LMGTE PRO	1'56.731	1.004
8	81	Nick Catsburg Martin Tomczyk	BMW M8 GTE	LMGTE PRO	1'56.992	1.265
9	51	James Calado Alessandro Pier Guidi	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	LMGTE PRO	1'57.105	1.378
10	91	Gianmaria Bruni Richard Lietz	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE PRO	1'57.151	1.424
11	56	Jörg Bergmeister Patrick Lindsey Egidio Perfetti	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	1'59.001	3.274
12	77	Christian Ried Matt Campbell Julien Andlauer	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	1'59.203	3.476
13	90	Jonathan Adam Salih Yoluc Charles Eastwood	Aston Martin Vantage	LMGTE AM	1'59.275	3.548
14	98	Pedro Lamy Paul Dalla Lana Mathias Lauda	Aston Martin Vantage	LMGTE AM	1'59.338	3.611
15	88	Gianluca Roda Matteo Cairoli Giorgio Roda	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	1'59.757	4.030
16	54	Giancarlo Fisichella Francesco Castellacci Thomas Flohr	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE AM	1'59.809	4.082
17	70	Olivier Beretta Eddie Cheever III Motoaki Ishikawa	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE AM	2'00.003	4.276
18	61	Matthew Griffin Mok Weng Sun Keita Sawa	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE AM	2'00.118	4.391
19	86	Michael Wainwright Benjamin Barker Alex Davison	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	2'00.221	4.494