At the post-qualifying press conference, Andre Lotterer (leftmost in picture above) was characteristically humble in his thoughts on qualifying and being at Spa.
Lotterer: (#1 Porsche 919 Hybrid - LMP1 pole position) "It was good, it's quite important personally for me; when you join a team it's important to have good results. I've had good stuff in the past but you set the counter to zero and you have to restart so it was great for me today. Thanks to Neel for a stellar lap. I'm a bit on the conservative side, still building up speed. It was quite impressive, actually faster than I drove here in an F1 car (laughter) it's awesome to go around this track in these cars, quite a lot of fun. The job is done for today and the big one is tomorrow. "
Alex Lynn (fourth from left) was frustrated by the red flag but still managed, with the help of Pierre Thirlet (third from left) to put the car on class pole.
Alex Lynn: (#26 G-Drive Oreca 07 - Gibson - LMP2 ) "It was quite a difficult session for everyone with the red flag early on, I had just started my lap. I had a bit of trouble as well with the ByKolles car but I'm happy to be in pole position. During the week I've been focusing very much on consistency because we didn't get the result we wanted at Silverstone and we have been working on making sure we will finish and hopefully get the job done. "
Sam Bird (fifth from left) was very complementary about the handling of the Ferrari 488 and was keen to give credit to his race engineers for the pace of the car and GTE Pro pole position.
Sam Bird (#71 Ferrari 488 GTE - GTE Pro) "Davide (Rigon) will take the start so if we don't win, I get to blame him (laughter) but we are starting in the right place that's for sure. Ferrari have done an amazing job bouncing back from a difficult Silverstone and giving us honestly a fantastic car. That's the best Ferrari I've ever driven on a wet circuit so far. It really felt hooked up. It's not normal as well that you improve on your second lap which meant that I had a little bit more in the tank. I made a mistake, or ran out of talent in the final sector of the first lap so there was a little bit more, but Davide did a scintillating lap."
Paul Dalla-Lana (far right) was equally keen to play-down his role in their GTE Am pole position.
Paul Dalla-Lana (#98 Aston Martin Vantage - GTE Am) "Just let me say, it's nice to be able to hand it over to Pedro (Lamy) and let him bring it home. I wasn't super happy with my own performance but occasionally you get saved and that's what happened here. It does look like it's going to be a really tight race between ourselves, Porsche and Ferrari, there is just a small gap now on average. It's going to be really interesting."
Dave DAVIES