Audi nips Porsche for pole at Fuji

The No. 8 Audi takes pole.

Seven races, five fastest times in qualifying: The Audi R18 is the benchmark in qualifying in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) this year. In Japan, Audi managed to set the fourth best time in succession while rumors linger that Audi and its 'dirty' diesel engines will be pulling out of WEC after next year.

Lucas di Grassi/Loic Duval/Oliver Jarvis (BR/F/GB) will start the 6-hour race at Fuji on Sunday at 11:00 local time from the top spot. For the second time after Mexico, the driver trio secured pole position — this time, by a very narrow margin of 25 thousandths of a second.

"My tires were best at the beginning, but I had to abort my first lap because I hit traffic. I'm obviously happy that it was still enough in the end," di Grassi said. His teammate Loic Duval took over the cockpit and defended the top spot.

"From the practice sessions, we knew how close it would be," said the Frenchman.

"Lucas was a little unfortunate with traffic, whereas things went well in my case. The result is a great team performance because we got everything right on the mark — our engineers and mechanics, as well as us drivers."

[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"]The two Porsche 919 Hybrids will start from positions two and six on the grid for the seventh round of the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) at the Fuji International Speedway in Japan. The reigning world champions, Timo Bernhard (DE), Brendon Hartley (NZ) and Mark Webber (AU), have qualified for front row.

The current championship leaders, Romain Dumas (FR), Neel Jani (CH) and Marc Lieb (DE), will start the six-hour race on Sunday from sixth on the grid. Pole position went to their rivals from Audi: The car number 8 crew was 0.025 seconds faster than the best Porsche. This translates into a distance of less than 1.4 meters.

Toyota Gazoo Racing start third and fourth at home as No.5 heads No.6 TS 050 HYBRID

No.7 Audi R18 starts fifth as top five covered by just 0.286s!

The #1 Porsche will start 2nd

Rebellion pole again in LMP1 Privateer category, one second ahead of ByKolles

LMP2 sees G-Drive Racing take fifth pole position of season. Will Stevens and Roman Rusinov average 1m31.698s

Championship leaders Signatche Alpine start second as Lapierre and Menezes are just 0.2 behind polesitters.

Starting third in LMP2 will be Tequila Patron ESM new boys Antonio Giovinazzi and Giedo van der Garde in the Ligier JS P2 Nissan

The #66 Ford was fastest in GT-Pro

The Ford Chip Ganassi Racing team locked out the front row of the GTE grid for the 6 Hours of Fuji' today with pole position for the #66 Ford GT and second place for the sister #67 car.

This is the first pole position for the WEC-entered Ford GTs, which have topped the timesheets in each of the three practice sessions at Fuji.

"That result has been a long time coming," said WEC Team Principal, George Howard-Chappell. "We're very pleased to get the front row. The car seems to be well suited to the Fuji track and the drivers all did an excellent job. Now what we need to do is convert this into a good result in the race tomorrow. From what we've seen so far the race pace looks strong but in a six-hour race anything can happen."

Frenchman Olivier Pla took the fastest outright GTE lap in qualifying before handing the #66 Ford GT over to Stefan Mucke who put in another sterling lap to take pole position on aggregate.

The #5 Toyota starts 3rd

"Qualifying went perfectly for us," said Pla. "We have made progress every time we have gone on the track here. The car felt great from the start so I had the confidence to push hard on each flying lap. We work together closely with the #67 car, sharing information, so we learn from them and they learn from us and that is paying off. It was a very close session so I am happy for us and for Ford. Now we have to make sure we do a good job tomorrow."

Andy Priaulx and Harry Tincknell chased Pla and Mucke hard but this time they had to settle for second place behind their team-mates. Their second position though sealed a perfect qualifying result for Ford.

"I was following Olivier (Pla) on his fastest lap and he did a great job," said Priaulx. "I'm really happy because we have been P1 or P2 in every session since we arrived here in Japan. We had a little bit more understeer in qualifying compared to the practice sessions and we ended up less than a tenth of a second off the #66 car so it was a good close fight. There's a big race coming tomorrow and we're looking forward to the battle."

No.98 Aston Martin Racing took their fourth FIA WEC LMGTE Am pole of 2016. Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana combine to head No.83 AF Corse Ferrari by just 0.042s

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