In rain Audi Sweeps Front Row for 6H Silverstone

Andre Lotterer, Marcel Fassler, Benoît Treluyer

Audi has established the best starting base for itself for the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) season opener in Silverstone. Car number “7" of Marcel Fassler/Andre Lotterer/Benoit Treluyer (CH/D/F) set the fastest time, trailed by Lucas di Grassi/Loic Duval/Oliver Jarvis (BR/F/GB) in number “8" with a gap of just one tenth of a second.

For Audi, it has been the twelfth occasion of setting the fastest time in the FIA WEC which has been held since 2012.

Snow in the morning and a stopped third free practice, wet tarmac and a track temperature of six degrees centigrade around noon: the conditions for the first qualifying session in the 2016 season were anything but ideal.

Still, Audi scored the first point of the season for setting the best time in the final qualifying session at Silverstone in the UK. “Congratulations to our driver squads and to the team on today’s performance," said Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich. “Our team perfectly prepared the cars and our drivers made the best of these challenging conditions."

Their combined time was 0.104 seconds quicker than teammates Loic Duval and Lucas Di Grassi by 0.104 seconds.

Lotterer and Fassler’s top qualifying effort broke Porsche’s 11-race pole streak in WEC and marked the first pole for the German manufacturer since Fuji in 2013.

The 2013 World Champions will share the wheel of their new diesel-powered contender with Benoit Treluyer in Sunday’s season-opener.

Porsche was relegated to third and fourth on the grid, with the No. 1 Porsche 919 Hybrid of Mark Webber and Brendon Hartley only able to reel off a 1:54.150 average, which was nearly one-second slower than the Audi.

The sister Porsche 919 Hybrid, qualified by Neel Jani and Romain Dumas, was fourth, followed by the pair of Toyota TS050 Hybrids, which both battled boost issues in the session.

ByKolles Racing scored top qualifying honors in LMP1 Privateer, after at least one driver from each Rebellion R-One AER did not set laps in the 20-minute session.

A late flyer by Rene Rast, in drying conditions, saw G-Drive Racing score pole in the LMP2 class.

Rast and co-driver Roman Rusinov’s average of 2:08.479 put the Jota Sport-run squad on pole in its full-season debut. They’ll be joined at the wheel of the No. 26 Oreca 05 Nissan by Nathanael Berton on Sunday.

The No. 31 Tequila Patron ESM Ligier JS P2 Nissan qualified second, thanks to Pipo Derani and Chris Cumming’s 2:09.632 average.

Derani, meanwhile, set the session’s quickest single quickest lap, just 0.059 seconds quicker than Rast’s best.

The No. 43 RGR Sport by Morand Ligier Nissan will start third in class, with the pair of SMP Racing BR Engineering BR01 Nissans completing the top-five in class.

The Six Hours of Silverstone gets underway Sunday at 12 p.m. local time (7 a.m. ET) with live coverage on FOX Sports 1.

RESULTS: Qualifying

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