World Championship leaders Toyota Racing and the #7 TS040 Hybrid took pole position for the 82nd Le Mans 24 Hours at the Circuit de la Sarthe.
Kazuki Nakajima, who shares the #7 with Alex Wurz and Stéphane Sarrazin, became the first Japanese driver to earn the honour with a lap of 3mins 21.789secs, which also marked Toyota’s second pole position at Le Mans.
It is the first pole position ever for a Japanese driver, and Nakajima’s lap time of 3:21.789 in the No.7 Toyota TS040 Hybrid is a new qualifying lap record. It looked at one stage as though it would be a Toyota front row lock out, but Romain Dumas in the No.14 Porsche 919 Hybrid put in a fast lap time of 3:22.146, putting the German team – making its return to top line sportscar racing this year – on the front row of the grid. Third in class was the No.8 TS040 Hybrid of Anthony Davidson, Nicolas Lapierre and Sébastien Buemi, four tenths of a second ahead of the No.20 Porsche which had held provisional pole position up until this evening.
Audi Sport Team Joest’s well-drilled team completely re-built the No.1 R18 e-tron quattro following Loïc Duval’s accident yesterday and all three of its cars were on track during both the evening’s qualifying sessions. Also on track and running without issues were the two Rebellion R-Ones in the LMP1-L sub-category, the No.12 Toyota-engined prototype qualifying two seconds ahead of the No.13 sister car.
Despite a 25% reduction in fuel consumption, the efficient 1000PS Toyota Hybrid System – Racing powertrain helped Toyota Racing record a 0.557secs improvement on last year’s pole position time of 3min 22.346secs.
With two wins from the opening two FIA World Endurance Championship races, the TS040 Hybrid is setting the standard for efficiency and performance in the new era of endurance racing and that was indicated again.
The starting grid at Le Mans is decided by the fastest single lap from each car for any of the three qualifying sessions.
Kazuki and Sébastien took the wheel for the start of final qualifying, which had been extended by 30 minutes due to several red flags in the opening two sessions. They immediately set better lap times than in either earlier session.
Fine-tuning continued with all drivers taking turns to evaluate tyres and set-up before a final shoot-out for pole position, with Kazuki and Sébastien returning to the cockpit.
However, a late yellow flag zone denied a big crowd the spectacle but confirmed that Toyota Racing will start from first and third.The team now turns its attentions to preparing for Saturday’s race when it will challenge to win Toyota’s first Le Mans 24 Hours at the 16th attempt, with the race beginning at 15.00.
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