Porsche sweeps front of Le Mans grid

Although the weather forecast called for scattered thunderstorms, the race track remained dry throughout both Qualifying Practice sessions at Le Mans. Nevertheless, the cars claiming pole positions yesterday during the first Qualifying Practice session kept their spots.

Neel Jani, driving the No. 18 Porsche 919 Hybrid, secured the pole position yesterday with a lap in 3:16.887, the best lap time ever of an LM P1 car and the best lap time since both chicanes have been added in the Mulsanne Straight.

The Swiss driver and his teammates Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb will start from pole position on Saturday, followed by both sister cars, No. 17 (Brendon Hartley, Timo Bernhard, Mark Webber) and No. 19 (Nico Hülkenberg, Nick Tandy, Earl Bamber), resulting in a Porsche sweep of the first three spots on the grid of the 83rd 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Following the three Porsches, the three Audis, but not in the same order as yesterday as the three-time Le Mans winners (Marcel Fässler, André Lotterer, Benoît Tréluyer) in the No. 7 R18 e-tron quattro were able to squeeze past the sister car No. 9 of Marco Bonanomi, René Rast and Filipe Albuquerque. The No. 8 Audi, driven by 2013 Le Mans winner Loïc Duval, Oliver Jarvis and Lucas di Grassi, was the fastest of the four rings brand.

No change either for both Toyotas: the Endurance World Champions Sébastien Buemi and Anthony Davidson, joined by Kazuki Nakajima, who fully recovered from his crash at Spa-Francorchamps, will start from eighth on the grid in the No. 1 Toyota TS040 Hybrid, right behind the sister car No.2, with two-time Le Mans winner Alexander Wurz, Stéphane Sarrazin and Mike Conway behind the wheel.

The brand new Nissan GT-R LM NISMO, which make its debuts in endurance racing at Le mans, will start from the back of the LM P1 field, even though the three cars were faster than yesterday.

If none of the drivers of the No. 12 Rebellion Racing R-One were able to improve yesterday’s best lap time, the sister car was three seconds quicker than yesterday, but Alexandre Imperatori, Dominik Kraihamer and Daniel Abt were unable to pass teammates Nicolas Prost, Mathias Beche and Nick Heidfeld.

In the LM P2 class, the brand new Oreca 05 will start from pole position thanks to Chinese team KCMG and Matt Howson, Richard Bradley and Nicolas Lapierre with yesterday’s best lap time of 3:38.032. G-Drive Racing’s No. 26 Ligier chalked up the second best lap time today, passing Greaves Motorsport and last year’s winner Jota Sport.