Brendon Hartley and Mark Webber have claimed pole position for Round 8 of the World Endurance Championship, edging out a resurgent Toyota.

Hartley and Webber, who will be joined by Timo Bernhard for the Shanghai 6 Hour race, combined to record a two-lap average of 1:44.46s.

There was a scare for Porsche with Hartley forced to saddle up for another run late in the session after his time was stripped for exceeding the track limits.

A late burst by the #5 Toyota TS050 that was qualified by Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima saw the pair fall a mere .06s short of the pole.

The #8 Audi R18 e-tron quattro of Oliver Jarvis and Loic Duval momentarily held second before the machine, which will see Lucas di Grassi join for the race, was shuffled back to the second row after ending the 20-minute qualifying run in third.

Toyota’s #6 machine, qualified by Stephane Sarrazin and Mike Conway, will start from fourth ahead of the #7 Audi.

Marcel Fassler and Benoit Treluyer set a two-lap average of 1:44.86s which crucially bettered the WEC championship-leading Porsche of Marc Lieb and Neel Jani who find themselves anchored down in sixth in the car they will share with Romain Dumas.

In LMP2, the Manor Nissan-powered Oreca driven by the all-British crew of Alex Lynn, Richard Bradley and Matthew Rao topped the class ahead of Signatech Alpine Nissan of Stephane Richelmi, Gustavo Menezes and Nicolas Lapierre

Harry Tincknell and Andy Priaulx have claimed the pole in GTE Pro, leading a Ford GT one-two ahead of the #66 machine shared by Olivier Pla and Stefan Mucke.

The #67 Ford set a two-lap average of 2:01.391, to shade its stablemate by .13s and claim a second front row start on the bounce.

In GTE Am the Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage of Pedro Lamy, Mathias Lauda and Paul Dalla Lana has continued its form run by qualifying fastest ahead of the AF Corse Ferrari 458 of Francois Perrado, Emmanuel Collard and Rui Aguas.

Result: qualifying