Audi finally ended Porsche’s WEC domination at the 6 Hours of Silverstone qualifying today by winning pole for tomorrow’s race. They did this in a fashionable 1-2 finish style, effectively locking the front row for the first race of the 2016 FIA World Endurance Championship.
The #7 Audi R18 e-tron quattro of Andre Lotterer, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler crossed the finish line first after the 20-minute wet session. Second across the line was the sister #8 car of Lucas Di Grassi, Loic Duval and Oliver Jarvis. Di Grassi was on the verge of claiming the first pole of the season in his final flying lap when the Audi ran wide and off the track.
Porsche claimed third place in LMP1 with the #1 Porsche 919 Hybrid of Timo Bernhard, Mark Webber and Brendon Hartley, which was followed by the #2 car of Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb. Still, qualifying in WEC is not an assurance of a win in the main race meaning we are yet to see if indeed the Audi prototypes are back into their best form of winning. Nonetheless, their speed was evident throughout the wet session.
Meanwhile, the #4 Bykolles CLM-AER LMP1 car of James Rossiter and Oliver Webb won pole in the privateer category. LMP2 pole went to the #26 G-Drive Racing Oreca05-Nissan of Roman Rusinov and Rene Rast sharing the podium with two Ligier-Nissan cars – the #31 and #43.
LMGTE-Pro pole went to Ferrari with the #71 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE piloted by Davide Rigon and Sam Bird. Their sister car, the #51 Ferrari 488 GTE was leading throughout the session and held provisional pole up until a technical glitch hit them forcing them to drop out before setting an average time, they will start from the back row tomorrow. This was the first official outing for the new Ferrari 488 GTE in the FIA WEC.
P2 in this class went to the #77 Dempsey-Proton Porsche 911 RSR of Richard Leitz and Michael Christensen leading the #66 Ford Chip Ganassi Team UK Ford GT of Stefan Mucke and Olivier Pla. This was an impressive result for the new Ford GT GTE in WEC, after having a tough debut in the first races of the 2016 IMSA season in North America.
LMGTE-Am pole went to the #88 Abu Dhabi –Proton Competition Porsche 911 RSR driven by Klaus Bachler and Khaled Al Qubaisi.They shared the podium with the #78 Porsche 911 RSR of KCMG and the #50 Larbre Competition Chevrolet Corvette C7.R.
The 6 Hours of Silverstone is scheduled to start at 12h00 BST tomorrow. Sunday’s tickets cost £40 at the gate, the race will be aired on Eurosport 1 from 17H00 to 19H15 CET.
