Lopez, Kobayashi lead Toyota to home Fuji WEC pole

Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi led Toyota to pole position for its home FIA World Endurance Championship round after narrowly beating teammates Fernando Alonso and Sebastien Buemi in qualifying for the 6 Hours of Fuji on Saturday.

Sharing qualifying duties behind the wheel of the #7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid, Lopez and Kobayashi recorded a lap average of 1m23.557s to edge out Buemi and Alonso in the #8 Toyota by 0.091 seconds, securing their second pole position of the season.

Lopez had trailed McLaren Formula 1 driver Alonso following the first runs in LMP qualifying at Fuji, only for a mistake from Buemi to result in his lap time to be deleted, forcing the Swiss driver to pit before going out for a final effort to try and keep the #8 Toyota on pole.

A slow effort from Buemi dragged down the car's average time, opening the door for Kobayashi to wrestle pole away for the #7 crew.

The result continued Toyota's perfect qualifying record this season as the LMP1 non-hybrid privateers failed to put up a fight despite mid-weekend Equivalence of Technology changes made to try and level the playing field.

Rebellion Racing locked out P3 and P4 on the grid, led by Neel Jani and Andre Lotterer, who finished eight-tenths of a second off the pole-sitting Toyota in the #1 Rebellion R13 Gibson.

SMP Racing took fifth and sixth in class as Egor Orudzhev and Stephane Sarrazin edged out teammates Jenson Button and Vitaly Petrov, while ByKolles took P7 overall ahead of DragonSpeed's #10 BR Engineering BR1, which propped up the running order in LMP1.

Anthony Davidson and Roberto Gonzalez charged to pole position in LMP2 for DragonSpeed in the #31 Oreca 07 Gibson, finishing three-tenths of a second clear of the #37 Jackie Chan DC Racing entry. The sister DC Racing car, the #38 Oreca, finished a further one-tenth of a second back for third in class.

Aston Martin Racing celebrated its first pole position with its new Vantage GTE car as #95 drivers Nicki Thiim and Marco Sørensen combined to fend off the #82 BMW M8 GTE of Antonio Felix da Costa and Tom Blomqvist by less than two-tenths of a second in GTE-Pro.

The sister #97 Aston Martin took P3 in class ahead of Ford Chip Ganassi Racing's #67 Ford GT, while the AF Corse pair of Ferrari 488 GTE Evos wound up fifth and sixth in class.

Despite seeing the factory-run Porsche 911 RSRs struggle in GTE-Pro, Dempsey-Proton Racing managed to capture class pole in GTE-Am with Matteo Cairoli and Satoshi Hoshino, who edge out the #98 Aston Martin Racing crew by 0.064 seconds in the final combined averages.

The WEC 6 Hours of Fuji begins at 11am local time (3am BST) on Sunday.