Nick Tandy and Neel Jani put the Porsche 919 Hybrid on pole position for its final World Endurance Championship outing in Bahrain.
Tandy came from behind to deny Toyota’s Jose Maria Lopez and Mike Conway from taking the top spot during a close-fought 20-minute evening session.
A mistake by Tandy on his first attempt put the Toyota crew ahead initially, with Conway’s time of 1:39.517s setting the bar after the first set of runs.
Jani then posted the fastest lap of anyone (1:59.084s) midway through the session, but Porsche needed to seat Tandy back in the car if it was going to secure the top spot.
The German manufacturer had decided to send both its cars out at the first opportunity, meaning there was enough time for Tandy to string together a final attempt.
The Briton’s improvement to a 1:39.683s squeezed between the times set by Conway and Lopez, and when combined with Jani’s purple figure brought the #1 car’s average below the Toyota by 0.263s.
Recently crowned world champions Brendon Hartley and Timo Bernhard qualified third in the sister 919, seven tenths down on the pole figure.
The Fuji and Shanghai-winning Toyota finished fourth after both Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima failed to breach the 1m 40s barrier.
In LMP2, Signatech Alpine claimed its third pole of the year with Andre Negrao and Gustavo Menezes.
Watched on by team-mate Nicolas Lapierre, the Signatech duo combined to form an average of 1:47.227s that eclipsed the next-best time by three tenths.
Thomas Laurent’s late flyer promoted the Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA onto the front row, one place ahead of the championship-leading Rebellion crew.
The Jackie Chan and Rebellion squads are in a direct fight for the LMP2 championship this weekend, with Bruno Senna and Julien Canal leading the Laurent/Oliver Jarvis/Ho-Pin Tung trio by four points.
GTE-Pro pole position went to Ferrari, as Sam Bird and Davide Rigon chalked up their fourth pole together in 2017.
Rigon set the benchmark during the first runs with a time of 1:56.021s, before Bird consolidated with a 1:56.046s.
That established a gap of two tenths back to the second-placed Aston Martin Vantage driven by Darren Turner and Jonny Adam.
Andy Priaulx and Harry Tincknell completed the eclectic top three in their Ford (+0.430), while the sister Ferrari of Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado assumed fourth (+0.848).
The second Ford GT will start from the back of the class pack after Stefan Mucke had two laps deleted for violating track limits.
GTE-Am pole position went the way of Aston Martin’s Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana for the seventh time this season.
