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WEC: #8 Toyota lowers lap record to take Sebring 1000 Miles pole

#8 Toyota, WEC

The #8 Toyota took pole for Sebring 1000 race in the 2018/19 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) ahead of its sister #7 car in LMP1 category.

The combined laps by #8 Toyota pair of Fernando Alonso and Kazuki Nakajima of 1m40.318s, where the lowered lap record at Sebring again after they did during testing, was enough to hand them pole from their teammates Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez.

The #7 Toyota pair set 1m40.803s lap in the night qualifying session with #17 SMP Racing BR Engineering’s Egor Orudzhev and Stephane Sarrazin (1m42.730s) ending up third as the managed to beat the #3 Rebellion Racing (1m42.863s).

The #11 SMP Racing (1m43.005s) was fifth with ex-F1 racer Brendon Hartley getting his first competitive WEC run after his last in 2017 as the #1 Rebellion Racing (1m43.015s) was sixth from #10 DragonSpeed (1m44.288s) car to complete the LMP1 runners.

Over in the LMP2 class, it was the two Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca cars heading the field with the #38 (1m47.558s) well ahead of #37 (1m48.208s) in combined times as the #36 Signatech Alpine (1m48.524s) rounded the Top 3.

The rest of the class had #31 DragonSpeed Oreca (1m49.681s) leading in fourth from #50 Larbre Competition Ligier (1m50.705s), #28 TDS Racing Oreca (1m51.218s) and #29 Racing Team Nederland Dallara (1m51.307s).

LMGTE Pro and LMGTE Am

The GT class qualifying was red-flagged early after a big crash of #61 Clearwater Racing Ferrari at Turn 7 with Luis Perez Companc driving – the Argentine came out unscathed. Once the action resumed, the #92 Porsche 911 RSR took pole in LMGTE Pro class.

The pair set 1m57.500s to head the standings from the two Ford Chip Ganassi Team UK cars with #67 (1m57.615s) leading the #66 (1m57.714s) as #88 BMW (1m57.841s) and #63 Corvette Racing (1m57.844s) rounded out the Top 5.

The LMGTE Am class had the #77 Dempsey-Proton Porsche (1m59.790s) taking pole from #56 Team Project 1 Porsche (1m59.935s) and #98 Aston Martin Racing (2m00.076s) in the Top 3. Full Pro and Am results:

https://twitter.com/FIAWEC/status/1106378229923934208