Neel Jani (CH) and Nick Tandy (GB) have achieved the Porsche 919 Hybrid’s 20th pole position in what was the Le Mans Prototype’s last qualifying in the 2017 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). Together with André Lotterer (DE), they will head into the final round of the 2017 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) on Saturday in Bahrain. Earl Bamber (NZ), Timo Bernhard (DE) and Brendon Hartley (NZ) – the trio that was crowned as new driver world champions two weeks ago in Shanghai – qualified third for the Porsche 919 Hybrid’s farewell race.
“We started quite well and I was half a second up on the ‘sister’ car despite the balance being completely wrong on my first lap,” commented Hartley. “After Timo’s run, we decided to save our tyres for the race. It should be a good fight tomorrow.”
TOYOTA GAZOO Racing narrowly missed out on pole position in a closely-fought qualifying session for the Bapco 6 Hours of Bahrain, the final round of the WEC season.
The #7 TS050 HYBRID of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López held top spot for much of the session but was denied a fifth pole of the season in the closing minutes by Porsche #1. They will start from second.
The six-hour race into the Arabian night will start at 16:00 hrs local time on Saturday. Stable ambient conditions of around 25 degrees Celsius are expected to continue.
Qualifying results:
1st #1 Porsche (Jani/Lotterer/Tandy) 1min 39.383secs
2nd #7 TOYOTA GAZOO Racing +0.263secs
3rd #2 Porsche (Bernhard/Bamber/Hartley) +0.628secs
4th #8 TOYOTA GAZOO Racing +1.391secs
5th #36 Alpine (Lapierre/Menezes/Negrao) +7.844secs
6th #38 Jackie Chan (Tung/Jarvis/Laurent) +8.229secs
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