The two Porsche 919 Hybrids will start third and fourth on the grid for the opening round of the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) at Silverstone on Sunday. The reigning World Champions, Timo Bernhard (DE), Brendon Hartley (NZ) and Mark Webber (AU), qualified third ahead of their teammates Romain Dumas (FR), Neel Jani (CH) and Marc Lieb (DE). On a drying track, with very low ambient and track temperatures, the front row went to Audi.
“The conditions were very cold and it was even snowing in the morning,” commented Hartley. “I think we made the right call to keep our full wets on the car in qualifying to try and get some temperatures into them. I had some traffic on my last lap, otherwise I could have definitely improved although not enough for the front row. In these conditions Audi was better than us.”
In the WEC the average of the respective best laps of two drivers counts for the grid position. In Silverstone Hartley/Webber (car number 1 / 1:54.150 minutes) and Dumas/Jani (car number 2 / 1:54.266 minutes) were the qualifying drivers.
In the morning, during the third free practice session, the Porsche prototypes only did one installation lap each with Webber and Jani at the wheel. The session was stopped early by the race director because of snow.
The six-hour race starts on Sunday at 12:00 hrs local time (13:00 hrs CEST). Eurosport will broadcast the final two hours and the podium ceremony live. Live feed, timing and more is available at the FIA WEC App. Live features such as on-board cameras, timing and GPS tracking are also available in the Porsche Motorsport App (free of charge). All live features are also available at porsche.de/fiawec.
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