TOYOTA GAZOO Racing will start the 1000 Miles of Sebring from pole position after a clean sweep of the front row in qualifying for the sixth round of the 2018-2019 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). Kiwi Brendon Hartley, along with team mates Mikhail Aleshin and Vitaly Petrov, driving for the #11 SMP Racing team will start from fifth.
“We had a little traffic and I can say that we were both in a similar situation with Stephane,” commented Mikhail Aleshin. “This happened because we were driving at the beginning of the session, right after the qualification of the GT cars. They left a lot of sand, so we had to, so to say, roll out the track. The team took into account these factors, and the second stint of the drivers markedly improved the results. It’s great that we made a strong competition for Rebellion and we will start from the fourth and fifth positions.”
The Toyota team maintained its perfect record in WEC qualifying this season, with the #8 TS050 HYBRID of World Championship leaders Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Fernando Alonso going fastest in qualifying with an average of 1min 40.318secs, earning the additional point for pole position in the process.
The #7 TS050 HYBRID of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López completed an all-TOYOTA front row with second place, 0.485secs behind.
Qualifying results:
1st #8 TOYOTA GAZOO Racing 1min 40.318secs
2nd #7 TOYOTA GAZOO Racing +0.485secs
3rd #17 SMP (Sarrazin/Orudzhev/Sirotkin) +2.412secs
4th #3 Rebellion (Berthon/Laurent/Menezes) +2.545.secs
5th #11 SMP (Aleshin/Petrov/Hartley) +2.687secs
6th #1 Rebellion (Jani/Beche/Senna) +2.697secs
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