Toyota holds off Rebellion charge for Shanghai WEC pole
Toyota Gazoo Racing clinched its fifth consecutive one-two finish in qualifying for the FIA World Endurance Championship 6 Hours of Shanghai on Saturday, but was made to work for it after being run close by privateer team Rebellion Racing.
Toyota was able to capture pole position at the Shanghai International Circuit with Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi in the #7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid, with the duo combining for an average time of 1m42.931s.
Toyota Gazoo Racing clinched its fifth consecutive one-two finish in qualifying for the FIA World Endurance Championship 6 Hours of Shanghai on Saturday, but was made to work for it after being run close by privateer team Rebellion Racing.
Toyota was able to capture pole position at the Shanghai International Circuit with Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi in the #7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid, with the duo combining for an average time of 1m42.931s.
The average gave them pole by two-tenths of a second ahead of Fernando Alonso and Kazuki Nakajima in the #8 Toyota as the Japanese manufacturer faced its first real challenge of the WEC season from Rebellion in qualifying.
Capitalising on tweaked Equivalence of Technology rules designed to try and level the playing field between hybrid-running Toyota and the non-hybrid privateer teams, Rebellion Racing finished a close third with Andre Lotterer and Bruno Senna in the #1 Rebellion R13 Gibson.
Senna had in fact split the Toyota drivers in his first run in qualifying, only for a quick effort from Nakajima to lift the #8 car back onto the front row for the start of Sunday's race.
SMP Racing will start fourth with its #17 BR Engineering BR1 ahead of the second Rebellion car in P5, while DragonSpeed took sixth overall. The #11 SMP Racing entry will line up seventh for tomorrow's start, with the #4 ByKolles car propping up the LMP1 order in eighth.
LMP2 pole went to Jackie Chan DC Racing's #38 Oreca 07 Gibson, shared in qualifying by Ho-Pin Tung and Gabriel Aubry, with the sister #37 entry taking second in class to give the team a front row lock-out. DragonSpeed took third, finishing a second off the pole time.
Ford Chip Ganassi Racing grabbed pole position in GTE-Pro with Stefan Mücke and Olivier Pla in the #66 Ford GT as they edged out BMW drivers Martin Tomcyzk and Nicky Catsburg by two-tenths of a second. Alex Lynn and Maxime Martin will start third for Aston Martin Racing on Sunday.
GTE-Am pole went to Aston Martin Racing's #98 Vantage after a late effort from Pedro Lamy secured top spot ahead of the #77 Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche 911 RSR, the gap being just 0.067 seconds come the end of the session.
