The three Porsche/Michelins monopolised the top three places on the provisional grid after this evening’s Q1. Neel Jani’s early blinder (3m16.897s, a new track lap record) earned overnight ‘pole’ for the N°18 919 Hybrid of Dumas/Jani/Lieb. The N°17 and N°19 sister cars were second and third fastest. Neither the Audis nor Toyotas seemed a match for the Stuttgart prototypes.
After the afternoon’s rain, the sky was fairly bright for the start of Qualifying Practice 1 on the stroke of 10pm, with two hours to post the quickest time possible before the cut-off time at midnight. Meanwhile, all the drivers need to complete a minimum of five night-time laps between now and the end-of-play Thursday.
With a dry track and the temperature standing at a cool 20°C, the conditions were ideal for some good entertainment and you could sense the excitement increase a notch as the cars went onto the track. Who would lay down the evening’s first marker? And, after all the predictions heard since the start of the season, what sort of qualifying time were we looking at?
As everyone manoeuvred during their ‘out’ laps to get a clear track ahead, the first clue came very quickly – at 10:08pm – when Bernhard (N°17 Porsche) stopped the clock at 3m17.767s. That’s a new record for the circuit in its current form. Almost immediately afterwards, team-mate Jani (N°18) was even quicker with a 3m16.897s!
Tandy (N°19) made it a provisional one-two-three for Porsche when he took third with a 3m19.297s.
At this stage, the best Audi (N°8, Duval) was nearly three seconds off the pace, while Toyota – around eight seconds adrift – didn’t seem to be trying for a qualifying time. The best-placed Nissan (N°23) was more than 20 seconds down.
With these early markers in the bank, and as it got darker, the battle settled down as the teams got back with their pre-race groundwork. However, we were looking forward to more flying laps in the dying moments, as is so often the case here.
Going against tradition, though, Porsche clearly decided that a lock-out of the top three places was enough for tonight, especially as nobody seemed to want to take the fight to them. Despite a few improvements during the last half-hour, the three Porsches were followed in the final order by the three Audis and the two Toyotas. Surprisingly, the best non-hybrid Rebellion was only three seconds off the pace of the second Toyota!
Positions in the classes were the same as they were in Free Practice, with the LM P2 order led by KCMG’s N°47 Oreca05-Nissan (Howson/Bradley/Lapierre). Aston Martin/Michelin’s early domination wasn’t threatened either and Richie Stanaway put the N°99 Vantage V8 on provisional pole in LM GTE Pro, while Pedro Lamy not only put the similar N°98 car in front in LM GTE Am but also posted the second-best GTE lap of the day.
Qualifying action resumes today with the second session at 7pm
