Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Conway won the pole position for this weekend's Spa World Endurance Championship race ahead of their Toyota teammates who lead the points standings with two rounds to go.
The point for pole means that Kobayashi, Conway and Jose Maria Lopez have edged closer to Fernando Alonso, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima ahead of a race they need to win if they are to have a realistic chance of winning the title at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June. The challengers are now 14 points behind their teammates, but a victory for Alonso and Co. at the head of another Toyota 1-2 in Belgium on Saturday would mean they would only have to finish fourth at Le Mans to seal the title even if the Kobayashi, Conway and Lopez win at Spa.
"I got a good lap, and it's always rewarding when you do that here at Spa," said Conway, who recorded the fastest time in qualifying. "It's good to get the point for fastest lap, but we know the race tomorrow is going to be hard with the poor weather that has been forecast, so it will be all about making the right calls."
The qualifying drivers of the No. 7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid both outpaced their opposite numbers in the sister car to take the top spot in qualifying by just under half a second. Kobayashi posted a time of 1 minute, 53.812 seconds to end up half a second quicker than Kazuki Nakajima in the No. 8 car before Conway went slightly faster with a 1:53.683 to end up a similar margin ahead of Sebastien Buemi. That gave the No. 7 Toyota a 1:53.747 average, compared with the No. 8 entry's 1:54.243.
Toyota is running low-downforce Le Mans aerodynamics at Spa, which the team admits could be a handicap in the cold and wet conditions forecast for race day. The best of the privateers, the SMP Racing squad, is running in high-downforce configuration and appears closer to the Japanese manufacturer than at any time over the course of the 2018-19 WEC superseason.
The Russian entrant's pair of AER-powered BR Engineering BR1 chassis topped the times in opening free practice on Thursday and the best of its cars ended up with a second of the pole-winning Toyota in qualifying.
The SMP Racing BRE Engineering BR1 qualified by Sergey Sirotkin and Egor Orudzhev ended up best of the rest on a 1 minute, 54.711 second average, just under one second off the pole. They were nine-tenths up on the best of the Rebellion-Gibson R-13s in fourth place, Gustavo Menezes and Thomas Laurent ending up on 1:55.640.
The battle for pole in GTE Pro provided a thrilling battle in which the Ganassi Ford GT team came out on top. Andy Priaulx and Harry Tincknell claimed a second consecutive class pole right at the end of the 25-minute qualifying session.
The No. 67 Ganassi Ford GT had been fourth after the first runs with a 2:13.571 from Priaulx, but Tincknell briefly moved the car up to second with a 2:12.973. Priaulx was then given a new set of tires to try to improve on his time before the end of the 25 minutes and found seven-tenths with a 2:12.797. That gave them a 2:12.285 average, which put them less than a tenth of a second up on the Aston Martin Vantage GTE of Maxime Martin and Alex Lynn.
Martin, who had been third after the first runs, was given another shot after Lynn went three-tenths quicker than his Belgian teammate. Martin then went quicker still with 2:12.698, which briefly put them on pole prior to Priaulx's improvement.
The MTEK BMW M8 of Augusto Farfus Jr. and Antonio Felix da Costa, who posted the single quickest laps in class, took third and was the fastest of the GTE Pro qualifiers not to go for an additional run. They ended up with a 2:12.977 average, just a couple of hundredths behind the Aston.
Porsche looks a shoo-in for both the GTE Pro drivers' and manufacturers' titles, but its two cars ended up seventh and eighth. Gianmaria Bruni and Richard Lietz just beat their championship-leading teammates Kevin Estre and Michael Christensen.
Jean-Eric Vergne and Job van Uitert claimed the LMP2 pole position in G-Drive Racing's Oreca-Gibson 07 badged in deference to Russian limousine manufacturer Aurus. Uitert had been fourth after the first runs before Vergne posted the fastest P2 time of the 25-minute session for the prototypes for a 2:00.674 average and the pole.
Gabriel Aubry and Stephane Richelmi were just over half a second in arrears in the best of the Jackie Chan DC Racing Orecas on 2:01.225. That was three-tenths up on the sister Jota Sport-run Chan/DC car in which Will Stevens had been fastest after the first runs.
TF Sports Aston Martin claimed a first GTE Am pole with Charlie Eastwood and Salih Yoluc.
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