Shanghai WEC: Rebellion takes first-ever outright pole

Rebellion Racing scored its first-ever outright FIA World Endurance Championship pole in qualifying at Shanghai, as the Toyotas ended up slowest of the LMP1s.

Gustavo Menezes and Bruno Senna set a combined average of 1m45.892s aboard the solo Rebellion R-13 to beat the two Team LNT Ginettas to the top spot.

It marks the first time a Toyota has failed to score pole in the WEC since Porsche’s final LMP1 pole in the 2017 Bahrain 6 Hours.

The #6 Ginetta bagged a spot on the front row ahead of the sister #5 car courtesy of Charlie Robertson and Mike Simpson, who trailed the Rebellion by exactly 1.2 seconds.

Toyota’s top qualifier was the #7 TS050 Hybrid of Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi, 1.3s off the pace, ahead of the #8 car of Sebastien Buemi and Brendon Hartley.

Cool Racing Oreca duo Nicolas Lapierre and Antonin Borga topped the LMP2 times with a best time of 1m48.649s, a tenth up on the #37 Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca.

In GTE Pro, Porsche secured pole with defending champions Kevin Estre and Michael Christensen in by a scant margin of just 0.018s ahead of the two works Aston Martins.

Matteo Cairoli and Egidio Perfetti ensured a sweep of poles for Porsche by taking the top spot in GTE Am for the Project 1 squad.

More to follow

Qualifying and the full 4 Hours of Shanghai will be shown live on Motorsport.tv. Check times here.

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