By alley - Jun 14, 2017, 6:09 PM ET

Kobayashi, Toyota top first LM24 qualifying

Kamui Kobayashi handed Toyota Gazoo Racing provisional pole for the 85th running of the Le Mans 24 Hours, with a 3m18.793s in a shortened Qualifying 1 session driving the No.7 TS050 Hybrid.

The Japanese driver set his time 20 minutes into Q1, which was reduced to 100 minutes after lengthy barrier repairs from a support race practice incident overran into the start of the session.

Kobayashi's lap was 0.693s quicker than the No.8 Toyota which came in second, and almost a second faster than the No.2 Porsche 919 which had its best time (3m19.710s) achieved by Timo Bernhard in the opening minutes.

The No.9 Toyota ended the night fourth, ahead of the No.1 Porsche in fifth. The ByKolles CLM came in sixth.

In LMP2, a new lap record was set late in the session by Matthieu Vaxiviere in the TDS Racing ORECA 07. The Frenchman's time was a 3m29.333s, beating the previous record held by Jos Verstappen – a 3m32s – set back in 2008.

It came after Manor's two ORECAs sat 1-2 at the head of the field toward the end, before a late flurry of times saw Vitaly Petrov take the top spot for the British team (flagged Chinese) in the No.25 briefly, before Vaxiviere and Bruno Senna leapfrogged the Russian in the run to midnight.

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The car didn't continue after the fire was extinguished, and instead was craned to safety. It remains to be seen how badly the car is damaged. Aleshin had set the car's time of 3m34s before the incident, which at the time was good enough to make it best of the non-ORECAs. By the end of the session, though, the car was 16th in LMP2.

The No.37 Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA, meanwhile, lost most of the shortned session after an oil pump failure forced David Cheng to pit the car for lengthy repairs. Its best time was a 3m41.393s, only good enough for 22nd in class.

Later on in the session No.47 Cetilar Villorba Corsa Dallara had a complete electrical blackout on its way back to the pits with Andrea Belicchi driving, before eventually being taken back to its garage. It did come back out, however, and eventually finished up 15th in class with a 3m34.846s.

And finally, the No.34 Tockwith Motorsports Ligier limped back to the pits with just over an hour left. Karun Chandhok was driving and didn't make it back out before the end of the session

In GTE Pro, Nicki Thiim (pictured) set a 3m52.117s on his first run at the start of qualifying and it held up for provisional pole. Remarkably, the Dane's time was three seconds quicker than any GTE runner at the Test Day.

Second and third were the two AF Corse Ferrari 488s, Sam Bird ensuring the No.71 was the better of the two. Bird's quickest tour of the circuit was a 3m52.235s, 0.9s clear of the sister car.

Behind, the No.97 went fourth-fastest ahead of the No. 67 Chip Ganassi Team UK Ford GT, which finished fifth with a 3m54.118s, courtesy of a late improvement made by Andy Priaulx.

It was a successful night in GTE Am for Aston Martin Racing, too, with Pedro Lamy once again proving the class of the field following his performance in Free Practice. The best from Lamy in the No. 98 was a 3m54.134s. Second was the No.77 Proton Competition Porsche following an early flyer by Matteo Cairoli, while the TF Sport Aston Martin set a time good enough for third.

UP NEXT: Qualifying 2 is set to begin tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. local time in France, before the final session at 10:00 p.m. running to midnight.

Click on results to view full session results in PDF format.

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