The #7 Toyota crew took pole ahead of the sister #8 car for the 2018/19 FIA World Endurance Championship’s 6 Hours of Shanghai race.
The #7 crew of Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Conway with Jose Maria Lopez stayed on top in all of the 20 minutes session to take pole with an average time of 1m42.931s from its sister #8 crew of Fernando Alonso and Kazuki Nakajima with Sebastien Buemi.
They set a combined time of 1m43.159s with the leading privateer of #1 Rebellion Racing (1m43.218s) of Andre Lotterer, Bruno Senna and Neel Jani ending up a close third – just 0.059s behind the #8 Toyota.
The two Rebellion cars were set apart by the #17 SMP Racing BR Engineering crew of Stephane Sarrazin, Egor Orudzhev and Matevos Isaakyan, who set a time of 1m43.870s to be within a second of #7 Toyota’s pole time.
The #3 Rebellion Racing Gibson crew of Thomas Laurent, Mathias Beche and Gustavo Menezes were fifth with a 1m44.179s from #10 DragonSpeed BR Engineering (1m44.612s) of Renger van der Zande, Ben Hanley and James Allen.
The American outfit managed to beat the #11 SMP Racing BR Engineering of Jenson Button, Vitaly Petrov and Mikhail Aleshin after the Russian crew faced another drama when it stopped on track but continued on.
The LMP1 class was rounded out by #4 ByKolles Nismo (1m46.533s) of Oliver Webb and Tom Dillmann in eighth with as Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca led the LMP2 class with #38 crew ahead of the #37 car.
The #38 car of Ho-Pin Tung, Gabriel Aubry, Stephane Richelmi set a 1m48.888s with the #37’s Jazeman Jaafar, Nabil Jeffri and Weiron Tan’s 1m49.138s as #36 DragonSpeed Oreca (1m49.857s) of Pastor Maldonado, Anthony Davidson and Roberto Gonzalez in third.
The #36 Signatech Alpine of Nicolas Lapierre, Pierre Thiriet, Andre Negrao were 12th overall and fourth in class despite a late spin along with the #50 Larbre Competition Ligier (1m51.925s) of Erwin Creed, Romano Ricci and Enzo Guibbert.
The French team finished seventh in class behind #28 TDS Racing Oreca (1m51.006s) of Loic Duval, Matthieu Vaxiviere and Francois Perrodo in fifth and #39 Racing Team Nederland Dallara (1m51.657s) of Giedo van der Garde, Frits van Eerd and Nyck de Vries sixth.
LMGTE-Pro, LMTGE-Am
The LMGTE-Pro class saw a close fight between four of the six manufacturers in the category was #66 Ford Chip Ganassi Team UK taking pole with a 1m58.627s time from #81 BMW Team Mtek (1m58.874s) and #97 Aston Martin Racing (1m59.000s).
The #92 Porsche GT Team ended up fourth with the four manufacturers within 0.404s of each other. It wasn’t the best day for the AF Course Ferrari cars who were only ninth and 10th respectively with Corvette rounding out the 11 runners in the category.
The LMGTE-Am class honours went to #98 Aston Martin Racing with a 2m01.884s lap time from #77 Dempsey – Proton Racing Porsche (2m01.951s) and #54 Spirit of Race Ferrari (2m02.090s).
