By alley - Oct 31, 2015, 4:31 AM ET

WEC: Webber/Hartley claim Shanghai pole

Mark Webber and Brendon Hartley claimed pole position for Porsche ahead of Sunday's penultimate round of the World Endurance Championship at Shanghai.

Hartley and Webber set the fastest two laps of qualifying to end up with a 1m42.719s average aboard their Porsche 919 Hybrid. That put them more than seven tenths up on the sister Porsche qualified by Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas in second position.

The point for pole position means that Webber, Hartley and Timo Bernhard increase their championship lead to two points.

Hartley, who set the fastest lap of the session with a 1m42.621s, said: "We were not that confident in free practice one and we put a good little program together to improve the car.

"The car was on fire – I did a quali sim this morning and found it hard to match that."

The Porsches both ran on two new sets of tires, whereas Audi, which ended up in third and fourth positions, used one set of Michelins.

Loic Duval and Lucas di Grassi took third place in their R18 E-tron quattro with a 1m44.200s average, which put them more than four tenths up on the sister car qualified by Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler.

Toyota again filled out positions five and six with its pair of TS040 Hybrids, Sebastien Buemi and Anthony Davidson ending up two tenths clear of Alex Wurz and Mike Conway.

G-DRIVE BEATS KCMG IN LMP2 BATTLE

The championship-leading G-Drive Racing squad took LMP2 pole with an average of 1m52.763s from Julien Canal and Sam Bird in its lead Ligier-Nissan JSP2.

That put them nearly six tenths up on the KCMG ORECA-Nissan 05 qualified by Matt Howson and Nick Tandy.

AF Corse drivers Toni Vilander and Gianmaria Bruni took the point for pole position in GTE Pro aboard their Ferrari 458 Italia. Their average of 2m02.243s shaded that of team-mates James Calado and Davide Rigon by just over two tenths. Alex MacDowall and Fernando Rees ended up third in the fastest of the Aston Martin Vantage GTEs.

The two Manthey Porsche 911 RSRs took fourth and fifth positions, but opted for a different tire strategy to the top three. The used one set of medium compound Michelins rather than two sets of softs.

Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana claimed pole in GTE Am for Aston Martin.

The race airs live on FOX Sports, starting at FOX Sports 2 at 11 p.m. ET Saturday night and switching to FOX Sports 1 for the finish, from 3:30-5:00 a.m. ET.

QUALIFYING TIMES:

Pos	Class	Driver	Team	Car	Time	Gap
1	LMP1	T.Bernhard, M.Webber, B.Hartley	Porsche Team	Porsche	1m42.719ss	1m42.719s
2	LMP1	R.Dumas, N.Jani, M.Lieb	Porsche Team	Porsche	1m43.488ss	0.769s
3	LMP1	L.di Grassi, L.Duval, O.Jarvis	Audi Sport Team Joest	Audi	1m44.200ss	1.481s
4	LMP1	M.Fassler, A.Lotterer, B.Treluyer	Audi Sport Team Joest	Audi	1m44.645ss	1.926s
5	LMP1	A.Davidson, S.Buemi, K.Nakajima	Toyota Racing	Toyota	1m45.776ss	3.057s
6	LMP1	A.Wurz, S.Sarrazin, M.Conway	Toyota Racing	Toyota	1m45.962ss	3.243s
7	LMP1	A.Imperatori, D.Kraihamer, M.Tuscher	Rebellion Racing	Rebellion/AER	1m49.418ss	6.699s
8	LMP1	N.Prost, M.Beche	Rebellion Racing	Rebellion/AER	1m50.942ss	8.223s
9	LMP1	S.Trummer, P.Kaffer	Team ByKolles	CLM/AER	1m52.069ss	9.350s
10	LMP2	R.Rusinov, J.Canal, S.Bird	G-Drive Racing	Ligier/Nissan	1m52.763ss	10.044s
11	LMP2	M.Howson, R.Bradley, N.Tandy	KCMG	ORECA/Nissan	1m53.345ss	10.626s
12	LMP2	G.Yacaman, L.Derani, R.Gonzalez	G-Drive Racing	Ligier/Nissan	1m53.390ss	10.671s
13	LMP2	P.Ragues, O.Webb, C.Cumming	Team SARD Morand	Morgan/SARD	1m53.600ss	10.881s
14	LMP2	N.Panciatici, P-L.Chatin, T.Dillmann	Signatech Alpine	Alpine/Nissan	1m53.747ss	11.028s
15	LMP2	S.Sharp, R.Dalziel, D.Hansson	Extreme Speed Motorsports	Ligier/HPD	1m54.775ss	12.056s
16	LMP2	N.Leventis, D.Watts, J.Kane	Strakka Racing	Gibson/Nissan	1m55.205ss	12.486s
17	LMP2	D.Cheng, H-Pin Tung, A.Brundle	Pegasus Racing	Morgan/Nissan	1m56.624ss	13.905s
18	LMP2	E.Brown, J.van Overbeek, J.Fogarty	Extreme Speed Motorsports	Ligier/HPD	1m57.432ss	14.713s
19	GTE Pro	G.Bruni, T.Vilander	AF Corse	Ferrari	2m02.243ss	19.524s
20	GTE Pro	D.Rigon, J.Calado	AF Corse	Ferrari	2m02.508ss	19.789s
21	GTE Pro	A.MacDowall, F.Rees, R.Stanaway	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin	2m02.540ss	19.821s
22	GTE Pro	P.Pilet, F.Makowiecki	Porsche Team Manthey	Porsche	2m03.048ss	20.329s
23	GTE Pro	R.Lietz, M.Christensen	Porsche Team Manthey	Porsche	2m03.352ss	20.633s
24	GTE Pro	D.Turner, J.Adam	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin	2m03.393ss	20.674s
25	GTE Am	P.D.Lana, P.Lamy, M.Lauda	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin	2m04.728ss	22.009s
26	GTE Am	F.Castellacci, L.Griffin, S.Hall	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin	2m04.858ss	22.139s
27	GTE Am	G.Roda, P.Ruberti, N.Sylvest	Larbre Competition	Chevrolet	2m04.874ss	22.155s
28	GTE Am	F.Perrodo, E.Collard, R.Aguas	AF Corse	Ferrari	2m05.455ss	22.736s
29	GTE Am	V.Shaitar, A.Bertolini, A.Basov	SMP Racing	Ferrari	2m05.556ss	22.837s
30	GTE Am	P.Dempsey, P.Long, M.Seefried	Dempsey Racing - Proton	Porsche	2m06.196ss	23.477s
31	GTE Am	C.Ried, K.Al Qubaisi, K.Bachler	Abu Dhabi-Proton Racing	Porsche	2m11.851ss	29.132s