The two Porsche 919 Hybrids will start third and fourth on the grid in the 85th running of the Le Mans 24-hour race on Saturday at 3pm. With a lap time of 3:17.259 minutes, Neel Jani (CH) claimed the third fastest lap overall on Thursday evening.
Timo Bernhard (DE) qualified the Porsche LMP sister car to start fourth on the grid with a lap of 3:18.067 minutes on the 13.629 kilometre long Circuit des 24 Heures.
“We feel we have a really good race car,” commented Brendon Hartley. “Timo (Bernhard) for the fourth year in a row had traffic on his ‘qually’ lap. That was unfortunate but obviously today we saw a very good job from Toyota. The time from Kamui Kobayashi would have been hard to beat. I didn’t do many laps in the very last session because we had to stop early but we feel very happy with the race car.”
Both Porsche drivers achieved their respective best lap times in the second qualifying session, held in the early evening hours in still relatively high temperatures of 25 degree Celsius ambient and 35 degree Celsius track temperatures. The third and final qualifying session lasted from 10pm until midnight. Kamui Kobayashi (JP) in the number 7 Toyota took pole-position for what is expected to be an extremely hot race weekend.
Jani shares the car number 1 Porsche Le Mans prototype with André Lotterer (DE) and Nick Tandy (GB). Bernhard’s team-mates in the car number 2 Porsche 919 Hybrid are the two New Zealanders Earl Bamber and Brendon Hartley. Having a tally of 18 overall Le Mans wins, Porsche is the record holder and after the most recent victories in 2015 and 2016, is in the role of title defender.
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