Porsche locks out front row in 6H Mexico qualifying

Porsche LMP Team's 919 Hybrids are set to start tomorrow's FIA WEC 6 Hours of Mexico from the front row after beating Toyota's pair of TS050s to first and second in qualifying.

The No. 2 will start from pole position, after Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley combined for a 1m24.562 average, ahead of the No. 1 which was less than two tenths off with a 1m24.710s from Andre Lotterer and Nick Tandy.

• Starting lineup

Toyota did fight hard for pole though, with both its TS050s within a second and the team opting to send out No. 7 out at the very end of the session with light rain coming down to try and nab a point for pole. Ultimately though, Jose Maria Lopez was unable to improve in the dying moments, after getting held up in his final flyer by the No. 37 Jackie Chan DC ORECA.

In the end, the No. 7 will start third after an average of 1m224.802s, and the No. 8 will complete the second row after a 1m25.378.

"It came right at the end, but they'd been predicting rain all weekend; we used one set of tires to keep our options open for the race," Hartley said after the session. "We thought it was too wet for Toyota to take it at the end. They'd have had to do a big lap to get pole from us."

LMP2 was tight too, with the top three within a second. Signatech Alpine scored the class pole thanks to rapid laps from Andre Negrao and later Nicolas Lapierre, which combined created a 1m32.809s average.

"It's a great pole for the team, three tenths is a good gap," said Lapierre. "We thought it would be tricky with the weather but in the end we managed to get a few dry laps in. We'll be fighting for the win tomorrow."

Behind was the championship-leading No. 38 Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA 07 Gibson after a 1m33.105s from Ho Pin Tung and Thomas Laurent. The No. 31 Vaillante Rebellion ORECA ended up third.

Outside the top three, the No. 26 G-Drive Racing and No. 25 CEFC Manor TRS Racing ORECAs completed the top five.

In GTE Pro, the No. 71 AF Corse Ferrari took pole, with Sam Bird and Davide Rigon combining for a 1m39.425s lap that was just a tenth faster than the chasing pack. It broke the pole record from 2016, which was a 1m40.45 in the class, and was good enough to prevent a late charge from the No. 95 Aston Martin Racing Vantage.

"I had one mistake on the track limits, so I lost three tenths in my lap, but Sam put it all together, he did a fantastic job." Rigon said.

Early in the second the No. 67 Ford GT would take the top spot, Andy Priaulx putting the car on provisional pole, but multiple improvements toward the end of the session pushed himself and Harry Tincknell down to third after Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen in the No. 95 Aston slotted in second.

Fourth, completing the second row in the GTE class was the sister Ford GT of Stefan Mucke and Olivier Pla, ahead of the No. 97 Aston Martin which broke into the top five.

In Am, the No. 77 Dempsey Proton Porsche, which won last time out at the Nurburgring, will start from pole, after Matteo Cairoli – who topped FP1 and FP2 – and Christian Reid set an average time of 1m42.166s.

The No. 98 Aston Martin Racing Vantage of Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana ended up second just four hundredths of a second back, Lamy unable to improve after multiple attempts at the end of the session.

Tomorrow's 6 Hours of Mexico at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, situated in the heart of Mexico City, is set to get underway at 12:00 p.m. local time/1 p.m. ET.