Porsche has climbed back to ominous form with a stunning front row lock-out in qualifying for the Spa 6 Hour round of the World Endurance Championship.
Kiwi Brendon Hartley and German Timo Bernhard were issued with the qualifying duties in the #1 919 Hybrid with the pair producing a two-lap average of 1:55.79s.
The combined time was almost .08s faster than the #2 Porsche of Marc Lieb and Neel Jani.
Porsche, which had an indifferent opening round at Silverstone last month despite Lieb, Jani and Romain Dumas promoted to the win after the Audi disqualification, is streets ahead of the remaining LMP1 runners in outright pace.
Hartley is determined to make up for his crash at Silverstone which cost the defending World Endurance Champions any points in the machine which is also crewed by Mark Webber.
“We have now scored our first championship point for pole and want full points tomorrow,” Hartley said.
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“That’s the goal. After my accident in Silverstone our championship title defence starts here in Spa.
“I managed to put a pretty good lap together and Timo did almost the same lap time.“But we didn’t expect such a gap.”
Stephane Sarrazin and Kamui Kobayashi were almost two seconds off the pole time with their average of 1:57.69s good enough for third in the Toyota TS050 Hybrid.
Audi saw Loic Duval and Oliver Jarvis put the #8 Audi R18 e-tron quattro fourth on the grid ahead of the #7 Toyota.
In LMP2, Rene Rast and Roman Rusinov claimed pole for a second time in as many rounds this season in the G-Drive Oreca Nissan.
AF Corse topped GTE Pro qualifying with Davide Rigon and Sam Bird topping the class while Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana were fastest among the GTE Am runners in the Aston Martin.
VIDEO: Qualifying Highlights
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