WEC: Audi takes pole for its final race

Audi claimed pole position for its farewell race in the World Endurance Championship in Bahrain.

Oliver Jarvis and Lucas di Grassi took the pole in the #8 Audi R18 e-tron quattro by two and a half tenths from the #1 Porsche qualified by Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley. The pole-winning car's average of 1m39.207s compared with the Porsche's 1m39.471s.

Related Stories

Jarvis, who set his best time on his second lap, said: "I got traffic on my first lap and my second was a scrappy lap, but when I saw the time, I knew we had the pace. Lucas jumped in the car and put it on pole."

Andre Lotterer had topped the times by a tenth from team-mate Jarvis after the first runs, before di Grassi posted a session best that was just over a second quicker than Marcel Fassler in the sister car.

Bernhard returned to the wheel of the Porsche for a second run and improved his time to vault from fourth to second position. Teammate Marc Lieb did likewise in the championship-leading sister car and lowered the average of the 919 he qualified together with Neel Jani to put the car third on a 1m39.669s average.

Lotterer also made a second run but failed to improve on his time, which left the #7 Audi on a 1m39.698ss average.

The two Toyotas ended up fifth and sixth after both losing times to track limits violations. Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayahsi took fifth in the #6 Toyota – which has a slim chance of overhauling the #2 Porsche for the title this weekend – on a 1m40.222s average, which was half a second up on the sister car qualified by Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima.

The G-Drive Racing squad took its sixth LMP2 pole of the season by just two one hundredths from the Signatech Alpine team. Rene Rast was more than a second quicker aboard the Jota-run G-Drive ORECA-Nissan 05 than Gustavo Menezes in the Signatech ORECA, but Stephane Richelmi closed the gap to the pole winners when he went up against Roman Rusinov.

Aston Martin claimed pole in GTE Pro after Darren Turner and teammate Jonny Adam set identical times aboard the #97 Vantage GTE. Their time of 1m56.953s put them just over a tenth up on teammates Marco Sorensen and Nicki Thiim, who ended up with a 1m57.081s average.

Gianmaria Bruni and James Calado were a further three tenths down in the best of the AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTEs with a 1m57.380 average. The best Ganassi Ford GT was half a second back in the hands of Andy Priaulx and Harry Tincknell.

Pedro Lamy returned to the wheel of the GTE Am Aston he shares with Paul Dalla Lana to claim their sixth pole this year after losing the best time from his first run for exceeding track limits.

QUALIFYING RESULTS:

Originally on Autosport.com