Conway, Kobayashi score Spa WEC pole for Toyota

Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi led Toyota Gazoo Racing to a front row lock-out for the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps after scoring a one-two finish in Friday's FIA World Endurance Championship qualifying session.

Conway and Kobayashi teamed up in the #7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid LMP1 car to see off the challenge of Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima in the #8 Toyota to take their third pole position of the WEC season, and their first since Shanghai last November.

An average of 1m53.747s saw the #7 Toyota take pole by four-tenths of a second, as well as giving Conway, Kobayashi and co-driver Jose Maria Lopez a bonus championship point, reducing the gap to Buemi, Nakajima and Fernando Alonso down to 14 points ahead of Saturday's race.

SMP Racing managed to deliver on some of the promise it showed in practice on Thursday as Egor Orudzhev and Sergey Sirotkin produced an average that was within a second of the pole-sitter Toyota, giving the #17 BR Engineering BR1 AER car third place for the start on Saturday.

Thomas Laurent and Gustavo Menezes took fourth for Rebellion Racing in the #3 R13 Gibson, while Stoffel Vandoorne qualified fifth for his WEC debut alongside Vitaly Petrov in the #11 SMP Racing entry.

G-Drive Racing took pole position in LMP2 after a rapid final lap from Jean-Eric Vergne in the #26 Aurus 01 Gibson boosted the initial benchmark set by co-driver Job van Uitert, allowing the team to beat the pair of Jackie Chan DC Racing entries that finished second and third in class.

Ford Chip Ganassi Racing snatched a last-gasp pole position in GTE-Pro after a late improvement from Andy Priaulx lifted the #67 Ford GT to the head of the timesheets.

Priaulx combined with Harry Tincknell for an average of 2m12.797s to edge out Aston Martin Racing's Maxime Martin and Alex Lynn by just six-hundredths of a second, with early pace-setter BMW being left to settle for third and fourth in class.

A late improvement from Salih Yoluc in the #90 Aston Martin Vantage gave TF Sport pole in GTE-Am, recovering enough time on a second stint in the car to overhaul the #88 Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche 911 RSR that had sat on provisional pole.