The #20 Porsche 919 Hybrid, the fastest car in Wednesday’s qualifying session. [Photo credit: Porsche]
In what must have been quite a surprise to many in the pit lane yesterday at Le Mans, the Porsche Team ended up with both of their cars at the top of the timing charts after the first qualifying session.
After running trouble free, but a bit off the pace in the first open practice session, where Toyota and Audi led the way, the Porsche 919 Hybrids found some speed and at the end of the first qualifying session Brendon Hartley in the #20 car posted the fastest time of 3mins 23.157secs while the #14 sister car driven by Neel Jani did a lap of 3mins 23.928secs.
However, the day was not without drama, as Loic Duval crashed very heavily in the Audi R18 e-tron Quattro at the Porsche curves, destroying the car. Fortunately he did not suffer major injuries. It was quite the testament to the strength of the Audi chassis, as it was an extremely violent crash. The Audi squad faced an all nighter to get a new chassis prepared for today’s qualifying sessions, which begin at 7PM (Le Mans time). Knowing the Joest Audi squad, there is no doubt that they will get the car prepared in time. Marc Gene has been tapped to replace Duval for the race in the Audi, which he will share with Tom Kristensen and Lucas De Grassi. Gene is quite familiar with the new R-18 e-tron Quattro, having been heavily involved with its testing and development in the off season. Audi will be, without doubt, fully armed and ready for the race on Saturday.
Porsche, while on provisional pole after yesterday, faces a formidable task to keep their top spots on the grid. Today will feature two qualifying sessions, in which all drivers for each car must participate, and certainly whatever reserves of speed were unused yesterday will be on display today.
The qualifying session Wednesday, which was scheduled for two hours, was cut short due to on track incidents and in total the session was reduced to just 50 minutes.
According to Andreas Seidl, Team Principal of LMP1 for Porsche: “The first qualifying session has been interrupted by red flags and finally stopped early. Both Neel Jani and Brendon Hartley managed to get a relatively clear lap each. Compared to free practice earlier today, the lap times in qualifying clearly have been an improvement. We made changes to the car, which paid off. P1 and P2 are a nice glimpse and the result of a strong team effort. We have a good base line now for the two final qualifying sessions on Thursday. However, we are well aware that our competitors could not exploit their full potential because of the interrupted session.”
Stay tuned. This year’s running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans is shaping up to be quite a classic event.
UPDATE: Porsche 919 Hyrbids qualify 2nd and 4th for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Only 1.119 seconds separate the first 4 cars. The order is: Toyota #07, Porsche #14, Toyota #07 and Porsche #20. Audi took the next three grid spots. Stay tuned…going to be a great race.
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