Photo Credit: FIA-ACO
Sometimes in motor sports, initial looks can be deceiving. Entering Saturday’s festivities for the Six Hours of the Nurburgring FIA World Endurance Championship race, it looked like Audi Sport Team Joest had gotten a leg up on Team Porsche in the fight for 2015 LMP1 Hybrid supremacy. Sure, Porsche’s 919 coupe largely dominated the Audi R18 Quattro coupe three months ago at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, but in the previous two six hour enduros that opened the campaign and in practice on Friday, Audi had reversed the order.
Saturday however, has appeared to represent a return to the current normalcy created at Circuit de la Sarthe in June, as Team Porsche re-claimed its current spot as the team to beat in the FIA WEC, by leading the pre-qualifying practice session and then backing up the early return by sweeping the entire front row for Sunday’s race. The No. 18 machine with Mark Lieb and Romain Dumas handling qualifying, averaged a lap of 1:36.473 on the 3.199 mile layout, just enough to take pole position over their sister No. 17 entry of Mark Webber and Timo Bernhard, with the final spread being just under seven hundredths of a second.
After topping the list in both Friday testing periods, the No. 7 Audi R18 Quattro of Andre Lotterer and Benoit Treluyer dropped down to fourth on the grid, outgunned by its No. 8 teammate car of Lucas di Grassi and Loic Duval. Although race pace perhaps shows a more even battle, Porsche has Audi cornered in terms of qualifying punch. Neither of the Reinhold Joest-led cars was able to get within a second of the average posted by the pole winners. Toyota Racing, who dominated the FIA WEC circuit a year ago, continued their 2015 struggle for performance by qualifying fifth and sixth, a further second back.
Also backing up their form from Le Mans Saturday were LMP2 winners KC Motorsport Group (KCMG), who snagged the pole position in the smaller prototype division, after playing second fiddle to G-Drive Racing’s pair of Ligier coupes on Friday. With Nick Tandy and Matt Howson at the controls, the Hong Kong-based ORECA 05 coupe took top billing in advance of Sunday with a 1:46.132 average, taking pole over the G-Drive entry of Sam Bird, Julien Canal, and Roman Rusinov by about four tenths of a second. Signatech Alpine’s A450 open top split up the Russian-owned cars taking third on the grid ahead of the second G-Drive machine led by Gustavo Yacaman.
While KCMG and G-Drive have controlled the top of the table, two teams of note had their frustrations extended into Saturday. Strakka Racing was only seventh fastest in LMP2 in their first race since acquiring a Gibson 015S open top machine, the car choice that won earlier this season at Spa-Francochamps in Belgium. Also off target were the American-based Extreme Speed Motorsports pair of Ligiers, who posted the two slowest times in the division on Saturday. The Ligier runners are hopeful of victory this weekend, as their namesake Guy Ligier, passed away last week at the age of 85.
After being outgunned by TUDOR United SportsCar Championship regulars Corvette Racing at Le Mans, the Nurburgring was supposed to be the site of Aston Martin Racing’s jump back to the top of the GTE-Pro field as Corvette of course is not present this weekend. So far that has yet to surface. Instead, AF Corse’s pair of Ferrari 458s have stolen the stage this weekend, as they claimed the top two positions on the grid Saturday. In a close intra-squad duel, the No. 51 Ferrari of Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander posted a 1:54.275 average lap time to deny teammates James Calado and Davide Rigon the top spot by only 55 one thousandths of a second.
The Young Driver AMR backed Vantage V8 of Marco Sorenson and Christoffer Nygaard, was the best of the Astons in P3, with the top Porsche 911 RSR of Patrick Pilet and Frederic Mackowiecki coming up with the fourth best time. Pilet enters the Nurburgring Sunday, seeking his fourth consecutive GT race win, taking into account his three straight wins in GT Le Mans TUSCC competition.
Finally in GTE-Amateur, SMP Racing backed up their Le Mans victory by taking pole with their own Ferrari 458. Victor Shaytar and Andrea Bertolini averaged 1:56.528 to claim the honor by a half second on the Aston Martin Racing pairing of Pedro Lamy and Mathias Lauda. SMP took advantage of a late race crash by AMR at Le Mans to grab the lower grand touring classification triumph in June and Sunday will be seeking a similar P1 result.
After reaching the podium at Le Mans, Patrick Dempsey’s Porsche RSR will also be in contention on Sunday, after co-drivers Patrick Long and Marco Seefried qualified third on Saturday.
Stay tuned to OnPitRoad.com for a full recap of Sunday’s Six Hours of the Nurburgring.
