6 Hours of Silverstone – Qualifications: Porsche and Mark Webber on pole position
For the first qualifying session of the season, Porsche monopolized the front row as Mark Webber and Brendon Hartley outpaced their teammates Neel Jani and Romain Dumas.
Porsche has fully benefited from the new WEC regulations, which now average the best time of the two drivers instead of averaging the two best times of the two drivers. Moreover, the teams now have the possibility to use a new set of tires for each driver, which puts them on equal footing.
In this little game, Mark Webber and Brendon Hartley (who will also be supported by Timo Bernhard in the race) managed to make the best of it as they outperformed their teammates by more than 6 tenths. Behind them, it was much closer, with the first Audi, number 8 of the trio Oliver Jarvis, Lucas Di Grassi, and Loic Duval, missing third place by just 12 thousandths of a second.
Behind them, it is also extremely tight as the Toyota of world champions Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi, and now Kazuki Nakajima is only 0.030 seconds behind the third spot on the qualifying podium.
The second Audi and the second Toyota are, for their part, already farther behind as they are, respectively, 1.4 and 1.9 seconds behind the best time.
However, Porsche knows that the hardest part is yet to come as the English weather could play tricks on its team, as acknowledged by Fritz Enzinger, the vice-president in charge of LMP1: « With both Porsche 919 Hybrids on the front row, it allows us to start the new season as we finished the last. However, tomorrow’s race will be difficult for us. Weather forecasts indicate that there might be rain during the last third of the race. Our pace during the third practice session showed that we need to improve in the wet. »
