Toyota snatched pole position from Porsche in the dying seconds of qualifying for tomorrow’s Fuji round of the World Endurance Championship.

Timo Bernhard and Mark Webber held the pole in their Porsche 919 Hybrid when the session was red-flagged with seven minutes to go.

Sebastien Buemi, who was second at the time together with Toyota team-mate Anthony Davidson, returned to the track after the stoppage and was able to lower the #8 TS040 HYBRID’s four-lap average to snatch the top spot by four hundredths of a second.

Buemi, who reduced the #8 car’s average to an eventual 1m26.886s, said: “”We struggled to warm up the tyres and once I jumped in the car, I could not match his [Webber’s] lap times.

“I got quicker and quicker, but the red flag came in the lap I was hoping to improve a little bit.

“We had to wait a long time at the end of the pitlane and the tyres were not up to temperature and the first lap was a second off.

“I was quite desperate on the last lap because the car was getting better and better.”

Davidson, who held the top spot after the first runs, ended up with the fastest time of the session courtesy of a 1m26.473s lap.

Webber, who did not go back out after the red flag, said that he wasn’t overly disappointed to miss out on pole.

“We couldn’t get much more out of the car: sure we were sitting in the pits, but it wasn’t though we had made any mistakes,” explained the Australian, who set two laps in the 1m26s bracket on the way to a 1m26.929s average.

“We would definitely have signed up for the front row before qualifying.”

Neel Jani and Marc Lieb claimed third in the second Porsche with an average nearly four tenths behind their team-mates.

Alex Wurz and Kazuki Nakajima ended up fourth a further tenth behind on 1m27.437s.

The two Audis ended up closely matched in fifth and sixth positions as the last of the factory LMP1 cars with averages 1.2s off the pole.

Andre Lotterer overhauled the sister R18 e-tron quattro shared by Tom Kristensen and Loic Duval by five hundredths after taking over from Benoit Treluyer.

Roman Rusinov and Olivier Pla were quickest in LMP2 aboard the OAK/G-Drive Ligier-Nissan JSP2.

Their average of 1m33.062s was nearly half a second ahead of the OAK Racing Morgan-Judd/BMW LMP2 qualified by Alex Brundle and Gustavo Yacaman.

Fernando Rees and Alex MacDowall claimed a first pole position in GTE Pro aboard the #99 Aston Martin Vantage GTE.

Their four-lap average of 1m39.686s set on the soft Michelin tyre was three tenths quicker than that of team-mates Stefan Mucke and Darren Turner, who used medium-compound rubber.

Porsche drivers Frederic Makowiecki and Patrick Pilet took third place for Porsche aboard their factory Manthey-run 911 RSR.

GTE Pro points leaders Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander ended up only fifth, behind their AF Corse Ferrari team-mates Davide Rigon and James Calado.

Aston also took GTE Am qualifying honours with Pedro Lamy and Christoffer Nygaard.

Toyota narrowly secure Fuji pole from Hartley’s Porsche 919