Porsche locks out front row in 24 Hours of Le Mans qualifying after Thursday washout

The no. 2 Porsche 919 Hybrid of Neel Jani, Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb will lead the field away for the 24 Hours of Le Mans on Saturday afternoon after securing pole position following the conclusion of qualifying.

Jani, Dumas and Lieb paced the field during the first qualifying session on Wednesday night, finishing half a second clear of the sister no. 1 Porsche at the head of the timesheets.

Light rain during Q2 on Thursday evening meant that only teams that had not completed a clean run on Wednesday were able to improve their times before the final session was affected by even worse conditions.

A handful of cars ventured out onto the track early on, but returned to the pits after 20 minutes when the session was red flagged due to the downpour.

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A course car was sent out to gauge the conditions 10 minutes later, only to nearly spin through the esses in the first sector of the Circuit de la Sarthe.

The session resumed after almost an hour under the red flag once the rain had eased, allowing drivers who still had to complete their required night-time driving allocation to get out on track.

As a result, Porsche will lead the field away with both its cars on the front row of the grid, giving itself the best position from which to defend its Le Mans crown from 2015.

Jani's lap of 3:19.733 was enough to give the no. 2 Porsche pole position, with Timo Bernhard's best effort giving the no. 1 car second place for the start of the race on Saturday.

Toyota edged out Audi in the battle to be best of the rest, with the no. 6 TS050 Hybrid finished a second down on the pole-sitting Porsche in third place. The sister no. 5 car will start fourth ahead of the no. 7 and no. 8 Audi R18s in P5 and P6 respectively.

In LMP2, G-Drive Racing secured pole position with its no. 26 Oreca Nissan driver by Roman Rusinov, Will Stevens and Rene Rast. Rast set the quickest time of the session on Wednesday, a lap of 3:36.605 securing class pole by half a second from the no. 35 Baxi DC Racing Alpine entry and the no. 36 Signatech Alpine car in second and third respectively.

Amid an ongoing debate over the Balance of Performance penalties applied in the GTE Pro class to balance out the field, Ford Chip Ganassi Racing locked out four of the top five positions in its class ahead of its Le Mans comeback on Saturday. The two IMSA entries headed the class timesheets, the no. 68 Ford GT of Joey Hand, Dirk Muller and Sebastien Bourdais leading the no. 69 car.

AF Corse split up Ford's dominance in GTE Pro, qualifying its F488 GTE in third place ahead of the no. 67 and no. 66 Ford entries. Both Aston Martin and Porsche failed to get anywhere near the pace of the class leaders, finishing roughly four seconds away from the top time.

In GTE Am, Clearwater Racing picked up class pole with its no. 61 Ferrari 458 Italia, finishing three-tenths of a second clear of the no. 98 Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage in second place. The no. 88 Abu Dhabi Proton Racing Porsche 911 RSR qualified third ahead of AF Corse in fourth and fifth respectively.

The 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans begins at 3pm local time (2pm BST) on Saturday.