Mark Webber and Timo Bernhard claimed the first pole position for the #20 Porsche 919 Hybrid in a thrilling qualifying session ahead of Sunday’s World Endurance Championship finale in Brazil.
The Australian was only third in the times after his initial run before Bernhard hauled the car up to second, just 0.026 seconds behind the sister Porsche of Neel Jani and Marc Lieb, with two laps in the 1m17s bracket.
Webber then asked to go back into the car for a second run and posted a further two laps in the 1m17s to claim the pole with a four-lap average of 1m17.676s.
“I thought I was in one of Adrian’s [Newey] cars and I was driving way over the top; I was expecting way too much from the car,” said Webber.
“Timo put our session back on the rails and showed what the car could do, so at the end I said I had to go again, because the average is poor.
“The tyres weren’t too bad and I was pretty confident I could lower the average.”
Lieb also had a second run, managing to improve his average with one additional lap, but he and Jani ended up just over one tenth down with an average of 1m17.783s.
Newly-crowned WEC champions Anthony Davidson and Sebastien Buemi ended up third in the best of the Toyota TS040 HYBRIDs, a further four tenths back on 1m18.070s.
Marcel Fassler and Benoit Treluyer claimed fourth position in the best of the Audi R18 e-tron quattros with a 1m18.889s average.
LMP2 qualifying honours went to the G-Drive Ligier-Nissan JSP2 of Roman Rusinov and Olivier Pla.
Rusinov trailed the KCMG ORECA-Nissan 03R driven by Alex Imperatori after the first runs, but two laps in the low 1m24s from Pla put the car on pole when the Frenchman went up against Richard Bradley in the Chinese entry.
Rusinov and Pla’s four-lap average of 1m24.463s left them nearly four tenths ahead of Imperatori and Bradley.
Aston Martin Racing claimed pole position in both GTE classes: Stefan Mucke and Darren Turner ended up a tenth and a half ahead of Porsche duo Patrick Pilet and Frederic Makowiecki in GTE Pro; and Pedro Lamy and Christoffer Nygaard were one hundredth up on team-mates Nicki Thiim and David Heinemeier Hansson in GTE Am.
