The No.8 Audi of Lucas di Grassi, Oliver Jarvis and Loic Duval will start the FIA World Endurance Championship 2016 season finale in Bahrain from pole position.
This weekend’s 6 Hours of Bahrain marks Audi’s final race in the WEC after the German manufacturer announced in October it would be pulling out of the series.
Jarvis and di Grassi took the No.8 LMP1 car to first place in qualifying, with an average lap time in the session of 1m39.207.
The Audi beat both Porsche cars, with the No.1 919 Hybrid of Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley – which they share with Mark Webber, who is competing in his final WEC race – just over two and a half tenths further back.
They snatched second away in the final moments of qualifying, with the No.2 Porsche of Neel Jani and Marc Lieb – shared with Romain Dumas and leading the points at the moment – in third.
The second Audi R18 e-tron quattro of Andre Lotterer and Marcel Fassler were fourth, with Benoit Treluyer alongside them for the race.
In fifth and sixth were the No.6 and No.5 Toyota TS050 Hybrids, one and 1.5 seconds behind the pole-sitting Audi respectively.
Roman Rusinov and Rene Rast secured pole for the LMP2 class with their No.26 G-Drive Racing car shared with Alex Brundle.
They finished just 0.018 seconds ahead of the No.36 Signatech Alpine of Gustavo Menezes and Stephane Richelmi, with the No.44 Manor of Alex Lynn and Matt Rao next up.
In GTE Pro, the No.95 Aston Martin of Darren Turner and Jonathan Adams took pole, ahead of the sister No.95 Aston of Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen.
The No.98 Aston Martin of Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana secured first place in qualifying for the GTE Am class.
