The two Porsche 919 Hybrids monopolize the front row for the six-hour race on Saturday in Austin, Texas (USA). The reigning world champion Neel Jani (CH), André Lotterer (DE) and Nick Tandy (GB) will start from pole position. The championship leading Le Mans winners, Earl Bamber (NZ), Timo Bernhard (DE) and Brendon Hartley (NZ) qualified second for the sixth round of the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). The session was held in hot conditions with a 33 degree Celsius ambient temperature and 44 degree Celsius track temperature.
“It was a close qualifying,” commented Bamber. “Timo had a good lap on our car but I made a few mistakes on my lap that cost us pole position today. Well done for car number 1 and let’s have a good race tomorrow.”
TOYOTA GAZOO Racing will start from the second row after an extremely frustrating qualifying session for the sixth round of the 2017 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC).
Sébastien Buemi, Stéphane Sarrazin and Kazuki Nakajima, in the #8 TS050 HYBRID, were the lead TOYOTA in third place, with a gap of 1.659secs to the pole position #1 Porsche.
Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López will start from fourth in the #7 car, with the team determined to deliver a more competitive performance in Saturday’s six-hour race.
In the WEC, the average of the two fastest laps of two drivers counts for the qualifying result. Jani did the overall fastest lap on the 5.513 kilometre long Circuit of The Americas in 1:44.656 minutes. Afterwards, Tandy held his nerve when he had to go on a second lap in the 20 minutes long session. His first lap time was deleted because of exceeding track limits. Tandy managed another top lap time. With an average time of 1:44.741 minutes, car number 1 stayed on P1. Bamber/Bernhard achieved an average time of 1:44.994 minutes for car number 2. All four Porsche drivers topped last year’s best mark of 1:45.703 minutes set by Lotterer in an Audi.
Before the six-hour race that starts at noon on Saturday, Porsche has scored 199 points in the manufacturers’ world championship with Toyota on 141.5 points. In the drivers’ rankings, Bamber/Bernhard/Hartley lead with 134 points. After wins in Le Mans, at the Nürburgring and in Mexico, they are 41 points ahead of the best placed Toyota trio. Jani/Lotterer/Tandy lie third in the championship (65 points).
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