Porsche GT factory driver Kevin Estre believes there is no way of predicting the GTE-Pro battle at this weekend's Nurburgring round of the World Endurance Championship, despite scoring pole for the German manufacturer.
Estre and team-mate Michael Christensen gave the new-for-2017 Porsche 911 RSR its maiden WEC pole position on Saturday afternoon, beating the #95 Aston Martin Vantage of Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen by three tenths of a second.
The sister Porsche will start from the row behind, after Richard Lietz and Frederic Makowiecki qualified third.
However, Estre is refusing to believe that the qualifying result can tell anything about how Sunday afternoon's six-hour contest will pan out.
"We knew we would be quick and challenging for pole, but we didn’t do any runs on low fuel on new tyres, so we didn’t know what our grip level would be," Estre told Motorsport Week.com.
"The circuit grip improved for qualifying, but it was still a big question mark if we could get pole so we’re really happy because it’s something we’ve been waiting for."
"In qualifying they [Aston] were strong, but in the race it’s going to be different because they have Dunlop tyres rather than the rest who run on Michelins."
"It’s a little easier to know how Ford and Ferrari will do because we know about their tyres and can try to match what they are doing."
"Aston has been quite far off in WEC so far – they did well at Le Mans because of the specific sets of tyres that are used there – so it’s difficult to know where they will be on the long runs."
"In practice we can’t tell what tyres other teams are using. I think it’s going to be very open, and tyre management will be a big key because we don’t really know how the Dunlops are going to react to the conditions."
Pole position at the Nurburgring was Estre and Christensen's best result of 2017, following a fruitless start to the year that included a sixth-place finish at Spa sandwiched by retirements at Silverstone and Le Mans.
The pair currently sit 12th in the GT Drivers' World Championship, behind two GTE-Am crews, so a good result at the Nurburgring is required to re-inject some purpose into their full-season campaign.
"We’re not in the top half of the points, so for us we can’t say that the championship is over but it would be really tough to come back," said Estre.
"The sister car isn’t in a great position either but they are slightly higher in the points so I think they can still achieve something if they have a really strong second half of the season. "
"At the moment there are no team orders or anything…everyone is just trying to do their job and trying to get the best result out of the performance we have."
"In our car, we are not thinking aboout the championship – we are doing it race by race, and that means we can risk it a little bit more because we have a bigger gap to bridge than the others."
Porsche's latest 911 RSR program revolves around a car with the engine positioned slightly behind the driver, rather than the typical rear-engine setup.
Variations of the car run in both the WEC and the North American IMSA championship, where the US-based Porsche team claimed its first global global position last week at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
Estre took part in the first three races of the IMSA season before handing his seat to Gianmaria Bruni, so has been involved in the development of the package on both sides of the Atlantic.
"We had a good base for the first race at Daytona where we competitive and had one car finish second," he said.
"We have shown from the start of both seasons that our race pace is good, but we have seen lots of good progression in our qualifying results."
"It’s great to have both the US and WEC cars doing well at the same time. We can benefit from what the IMSA team learn and vice versa. They’ve had more testing time in the US because we have had to take lots of time to focus on Le Mans."
"We have a really close connection between both teams in the US and here, so that helps us a lot. To have two poles in a row is great, but they couldn’t manage to get the victory last week so we are hoping to get it here."
Round four of the World Endurance Championship is set to get underway at 13:00 (CEST) on Sunday, July 16th.
