Toyota will start tomorrow’s 6 Hours of Silverstone will both cars on the front row for the opening round of the 2017 FIA World Endurance Championship. The no7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid set the early pace when Kamui Kobayashi set a blistering 1m36.793 on his first flying lap.
The Japanese driver handed over to Mike Conway and the British driver set about consolidating the top spot only to have his first flying lap deleting for abusing track limits at Copse.
Conway duly did a legal lap to set a two lap average of 1m37.304 and claim the extra point for pole position. The time was 0.2 seconds ahead of the no8 Toyota of Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima.
The two Porsche 919s were 3rd and 4th with the no1 Porsche of Neel Jani and Nick Tandy the quicker of the two entries.
The no26 G Driver Racing Oreca-Gibson of Alex Lynn and Pierre Thiriet will start tomorrow’s race at the head of the LMP2 grid with an average lap time of 1m44.387, 0.05 seconds ahead of the no36 Signatech Alpine of Matt Rao and Nicolas Lapierre.
In the LMGTE qualifying session the no67 Ford of Andy Priaulx and Harry Tincknell was the pick of the GTE Pro field as the two British drivers used their home track advantage to deliver the first championship point of the 2017 season for the Ford Chip Ganassi Team UK squad.
The no71 Ferrari of Davide Rigon and Sam Bird were second quickest, 0.8 seconds behind the pole sitters and 0.1 seconds ahead of the no95 Aston Martin of Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen. The two Porsche’s struggled on their WEC race weekend debut and finished 7th and 8th in class.
The LMGTE Am pole was claimed by Aston Martin with the no98 Vantage of Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana taking the honours, 1.1 seconds ahead of the no54 Spirit of Race Ferrari F488 of Francesco Castellacci and Thomas Flohr.
