Shanghai WEC: Toyota claims another front row lockout

Toyota swept the top two positions in qualifying for this weekend’s Shanghai FIA World Endurance Championship round, seeing off a challenge from top privateer squad Rebellion Racing.

Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Conway secured pole with a combined average time of 1m42.931s in the #7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid, 0.228s up on Fernando Alonso and Kazuki Nakajima in the #8 car.

Rebellion was able to split the Toyotas on the first runs courtesy of Bruno Senna’s early laptime, but once Andre Lotterer took over for the second run the #1 car’s average fell 0.287s short of pole.

SMP Racing’s lead #17 BR Engineering BR1-AER secured the other spot on the second row.

LMP2 class pole was taken by the #37 Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca of Ho-Pin Tung and Gabriel Aubry.

Ford took honours in GTE Pro, with Olivier Pla and Stefan Mucke grabbing the top spot in the #66 car ahead of the lead BMW M8 GTE shared by Nicky Catsburg and Martin Tomczyk.

Aston Martin factory pair Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana took pole in GTE Am.

More to follow

Source: Read Full Article