As expected, Toyota dominated Friday's qualifying for the World Endurance Championship's season-opening round, the 6 Hours of Spa, with the #7 car of Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Conway taking pole ahead of the sister-car.
Update: #7 Toyota excluded, meaning #8 car will start from pole.
Kobayashi set the fastest time of the session, a 1:54.488, which combined with Conway's 1:54.679, gave the duo an average lap time of 1:54.583 to secure pole position, whilst the #8 car of Fernando Alonso and Kazuki Nakajima was almost four-tenths slower – 1:54.962.
Both Alonso and Nakajima were slower than Kobayashi and Conway, by almost five and three tenths respectively, meaning the #8 TS050 Hybrid will start second.
Rebellion Racing's Bruno Senna and Neel Jani will line up third, but were 1.8 seconds off the pole time. However the duo had a comfortable half second margin to the second Rebellion car piloted by Thomas Laurent and Gustavo Menezes.
Lining up fifth is Vitaly Petrov and Mikhail Aleshin. Of the two SMP Racing BRE Engineering-AER BR1s, the duo were the only one to set a timed lap as Stephane Sarrazin stopped on the Kemmel Straight with an unknown issue, bringing out the red flag and halting the session.
A second and lengthy red flag was caused by Pietro Fittipaldi who crashed heavily at Eau Rouge in DragonSpeed's Gibson-engined BR1. The Brazilian was immediately transferred to hospital.
LMP2
Taking the top honours in LMP2 were Nicolas Lapierre and Pierre Thiriet in their Signatech Alpine Oreca. An average time of 2:02.405 narrowly put them ahead of G-Drive's Jean-Eric Vergne and Andrea Pizzitola in second place.
Ho-Pin Tung and Gabriel Aubry outpaced the second Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA of Jazeman Jafaar and Nabil Jeffri by two tenths to line-up third and fourth.
GTE Pro/AM
In the GTE Pro class Ford reigned with a one-two, Andy Priaulx and Harry Tincknell beating team-mates Olivier Pla and Stefan Mucke to the class pole.
Pla set the best time of the four but a slower lap for #66 team-mate Mucke gave the advantage to the #67 car.
Richard Lietz and Gianmaria Bruni were third in the Porsche 911 RSR, followed by Michael Christensen and Kevin Estre.
Dempsey-Proton Porsche claim pole in LMGTE Am class with Christian Ried and Matt Campbell.
For full 6 Hours of Spa qualifying results click here.
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