Toyota and Aston Martin in pole position at Fuji

Qualifying for the 6 Hours of Fuji, fourth round of the 2018-2019 WEC, delivered a verdict without much surprise.

Published on 13/10/2018 à 08:04

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Toyota and Aston Martin in pole position at Fuji

Si l’on a cru un temps que la Toyota n°8 confiée à Alonso-Buemi-Nakajima was going to take pole position, the Swiss saw his time canceled for having slightly abused the limits of the track. It is therefore the TS050 Hybrid n°7 of Conway-Kobayashi-Lopez who will start in the lead tomorrow, thanks to an average time of 1'23"557, even if the advantage over the sister car is only 0"091.

In the second row, we will find the two Rebellion R13-Gibson. The good news comes from the fact that the Lotterer-Jani-Senna and Menezes-Laurent-Beche trios respectively conceded “only” 0”8 and 0”9 to the reference mark. Followed by the two BR1-AERs from SMP Racing, the Enso CLM P1/01 from ByKolles Racing and the BR1-Gibson from DragonSpeed.

In LM P2, DragonSpeed took its first pole position of the season thanks in particular to the excellent work of Anthony Davidson. In 1'28"906, the Briton and his Mexican friend Roberto Gonzalez precede the four other Oreca 07s with, in order, n°37 (Tan-Jaafar-Jeffri) and n°38 (Aubry-Richelmi-Tung) of Jackie Chan DC Racing, the n°36 of Signatech Alpine (Stone-Nagrao-Thiriet) and the n°28 of TDS Racing (Perrodo-Vaxivière-Vergne).

Aston Martin took pole position in GTE Pro thanks to the #95 of Marco Sørensen and Nicki Thiim, credited with an average time of 1’36”093. Wedged between the two Vantage AMRs, we find the #8 BMW M82 GTE of Blomqvist-Felix da Costa, which only concedes 0”182. The No. 67 Ford GT of Tincknell-Priaulx is fourth, just ahead of the two Ferrari 488 GTE d’AF Corse, la n°71 de Bird-Rigon ayant devancé de 0 »002 la n°51 de Calado-Pier Guidi. Les Porsche 911 RSR, pourtant en verve ce matin, sont seulement 8e et 10e. Reste à connaître les stratégies pneumatiques des différents protagonistes.

Dempsey-Proton Racing allows the Zuffenhausen firm to save its honor, the No. 911 88 RSR of Cairoli-Hoshino-Roda having taken pole position in GTE Am.

For the early risers among you, see you tomorrow at 4 a.m. for the start of the 6 Hours of Fuji.