Porsche drivers Neel Jani and Andre Lotterer claimed pole position for this weekend’s Spa round of the World Endurance Championship.

The qualifying drivers in the #1 Porsche 919 Hybrid finished with a 1m54.097s average to end up nearly six tenths of a second faster than the Toyota of Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi.

Jani said: “When I saw that we were 2.5s faster than our previous best of the weekend, I couldn’t believe it.

“It was a super lap until the last chicane.”

Jani trailed Stephane Sarrazin’s low-downforce Toyota TS050 HYBRID after the first runs with a 1m53.658s, which Lotterer followed up on with a 1m54.439s.

Conway posted a 1m53.911s to the put his high-downforce Toyota third after the first runs, before Kobayashi lost his first lap when Dominik Kraihamer spun in the ByKolles CLM privateer LMP1 entry out of the Bus Stop Chicane.

The Japanese driver could only manage a 1m55.476s on his second lap on his tyres, which gave them a 1m54.693s average.

Nicolas Lapierre, who took over the Toyota from Sarrazin, lost a time to a track limits violation and then put in a 1m55.745s after a visit to the pits to haul the car back to third with a 1m54.701s average.

Kazuki Nakajima and Sebastien Buemi took fourth on a 1m54.907s average, while Brendon Hartley and Timo Bernhard were a further half a second behind in fifth on a 1m55.440s.

The G-Drive Racing squad took a second consecutive LMP2 pole with Alex Lynn and Pierre Thiriet.

They ended up wtih a 2m02.601s average aboard their ORECA-Gibson 07 to pip Signatech Alpine duo Gustavo Menezes and Matt Rao by just two hundredths.

The second Signatech car was third-fastest, just 0.005s ahead of the best of the Manor cars driven by Jean-Eric Vergne and Tor Graves.

Manor’s second entry will start from the back of the grid after Vitaly Petrov hit the barriers at Turn 9, bringing out the red flags.

Ferrari claimed pole position with the factory AF Corse-run car driven by Davide Rigon and Sam Bird.

Rigon claimed the fastest time of the session during the first runs aboard the #71 Ferrari 488 GTE, before Bird emerged fastest of the second group of drivers.

He posted a 2m15.114s before improving to a 2m15.096s on his second lap on a new set of tyres, which gave the AF duo an average of 2m15.017s.

That put them almost exactly four tenths up on the Ganassi Ford GT qualified by Olivier Pla and Stefan Mucke, who took a 2m15.418s average.

Pla had trailed Andy Priaulx by just under four hundredths in the first runs, but Mucke ended up three tenths up on Harry Tincknell to reverse the positions.

Both Fords used only one set of tyres in qualifying.

The second AF Ferrari shared by James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi took fourth ahead of the two factory Porsche 911 RSRs.

GTE Am qualifying honours went to the Aston Martin Vantage GTE shared by Paul Dalla Lana and Pedro Lamy.

QUALIFYING TIMES:

Porsche steal Spa WEC pole from Toyota, Bamber and Hartley to start fifth