Webber and Hartley take Silverstone WEC pole for Porsche
Porsche celebrated a 1-2 in qualifying for the first round of the 2015 World Endurance Championship at Silverstone on Saturday.
Photo by: Porsche Motorsport
The #17 car driven by antipodean duo Mark Webber and Brendon Hartley outpaced the sister 919 Hybrid of Neel Jani and Romain Dumas by 0.619s over the two-lap average, with a combined effort of 1m39.721. Hartley secured the pole with the fastest lap of qualifying – a 1m39.534s lap.
Forming the second row of the grid will be the #8 Audi R18 e-tron quattro and the #1 Toyota TS 040 HYBRID, with the #7 Audi and #2 Toyota Racing sharing the final ‘manufacturer LMP1 row.’
As expected, it was a close session with just 1.9 seconds separating the top six cars.
As per the Free Practice sessions it was the G-Drive Racing team that topped the times with the ‘Latin’ flavoured No.28 Ligier-Nissan of Gustavo Yacaman, Pipo Derani and Ricardo Gonzalez starting from pole. Gonzalez and Derani set a combined 1m48.021s to shade the #26 G-Drive car by just 0.062s.
The new ORECA 05-Nissan of the Hong Kong entered KCMG team placed third, with their Porsche ‘loaned’ driver Nick Tandy putting in an impressive last ditch effort to secure the position.
The #95 Aston Martin Racing entry achieved the best LMGTE Pro two-lap average with Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorenson setting the times which resulted in a 1m59.970s average. This was despite WEC debutant Sorensen stating he had a scrappy lap when he made a couple of small mistakes.
Joining the Aston on the front row in the LMGTE Pro class will be the #99 car of Fernando Rees, Alex MacDowall and Richie Stanaway. The Darren Turner and Stefan Mucke Vantage V8 placed third to make it an Aston clean sweep on their home turf.
Aston Martin Racing celebrated another pole in the LMGTE Am class with the #98 Vantage V8 driven by Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana setting a combined 2m01.998s lap. Their time was 0.939s quicker than the Larbre Competition Chevrolet Corvette C7, driven by Gianluca Roda and Paolo Ruberti.
Tomorrow’s first round of the WEC is scheduled to begin at 12.00 local time.
Pos | Driver | Car / Engine | Time | Gap |
1 | Timo Bernhard Mark Webber Brendon Hartley |
Porsche | 1'39.721 | |
2 | Romain Dumas Neel Jani Marc Lieb |
Porsche | 1'40.340 | 0.619 |
3 | Lucas di Grassi Loìc Duval Oliver Jarvis |
Audi | 1'40.352 | 0.631 |
4 | Anthony Davidson Sebastien Buemi Kazuki Nakajima |
Toyota | 1'40.382 | 0.661 |
5 | Marcel Fassler Andre Lotterer Benoit Tréluyer |
Audi | 1'41.153 | 1.432 |
6 | Alexander Wurz S.Sarrazin Mike Conway |
Toyota | 1'41.694 | 1.973 |
7 | Gustavo Yacamán Luis Derani Ricardo González |
Ligier/Nissan | 1'48.021 | 8.300 |
8 | Roman Rusinov Julien Canal Sam Bird |
Ligier/Nissan | 1'48.083 | 8.362 |
9 | Matt Howson Richard Bradley Nick Tandy |
ORECA/Nissan | 1'49.389 | 9.668 |
10 | N.Panciatici Paul-Loup Chatin V.Capillaire |
Alpine/Nissan | 1'49.498 | 9.777 |
11 | Simon Trummer Vitantonio Liuzzi Christian Klien |
CLM/AER | 1'50.622 | 10.901 |
12 | Scott Sharp Ryan Dalziel David Hansson |
HPD | 1'51.551 | 11.830 |
13 | Nick Leventis Danny Watts Jonny Kane |
Dome/Nissan | 1'52.284 | 12.563 |
14 | Jacques Nicolet Jean-Marc Merlin Erik Maris |
Ligier/Nissan | 1'53.457 | 13.736 |
15 | Ed Brown Jon Fogarty David Brabham |
HPD | 1'55.491 | 15.770 |
16 | C.Nygaard Marco Sorensen Nicki Thiim |
Aston Martin | 1'59.970 | 20.249 |
17 | Alex MacDowall Fernando Rees Richie Stanaway |
Aston Martin | 2'00.175 | 20.454 |
18 | Darren Turner Stefan Mücke |
Aston Martin | 2'00.333 | 20.612 |
19 | Richard Lietz M.Christensen |
Porsche | 2'00.651 | 20.930 |
20 | Gianmaria Bruni Toni Vilander |
Ferrari | 2'00.701 | 20.980 |
21 | Patrick Pilet F.Makowiecki |
Porsche | 2'01.591 | 21.870 |
22 | Paul Dalla Lana Pedro Lamy Mathias Lauda |
Aston Martin | 2'01.998 | 22.277 |
23 | Davide Rigon James Calado |
Ferrari | 2'02.156 | 22.435 |
24 | Gianluca Roda Paolo Ruberti Kristian Poulsen |
Chevrolet | 2'02.937 | 23.216 |
25 | Christian Ried K.Al Qubaisi Klaus Bachler |
Porsche | 2'03.134 | 23.413 |
26 | François Perrodo Emmanuel Collard Rui Águas |
Ferrari | 2'03.482 | 23.761 |
27 | Viktor Shaitar Andrea Bertolini Aleksey Basov |
Ferrari | 2'04.114 | 24.393 |
28 | F.Castellacci Roald Goethe Stuart Hall |
Aston Martin | 2'05.050 | 25.329 |
29 | Patrick Dempsey Patrick Long Marco Seefried |
Porsche | 2'06.024 | 26.303 |
Be part of Motorsport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments