Porsche locks out front
row in Germany
Audi on Friday, Porsche on
Saturday ! Yesterday it was the Audi #7 who set the fastest time in
both practice sessions, today Porsche dominated the third practice
session and took a demanding 1-2 in qualifying. Romain Dumas and
Marc Lieb took pole in their Porsche 919 #18, just ahead of the #17
car driven by Mark Webber and Timo Bernhard. Audi has the second row
in their hands with the #8 ahead of #7. Toyota and Rebellion nicely
lined up on the third and fourth row ahead of ByKolles. Fourth pole position in a row for Porsche in 2015 and their eight pole position since the debut of the 919 Hybrid last year, pretty impressive figures.
In LMP2 it's Oreca on pole
with Nick Tandy and Matt Howson in the KCMG outpacing the #26 G-Drive
Ligier Nissan of Sam Bird and Julien Canal. Signatech Alpine took
third place in their Alpine A450B-Nissan, their best grid position of
the season. It seems like the Nürburgring is a track that suits the
Alpine well, as they were already fastest in yesterday's first
practice session. Strakka Racing's Gibson-Nissan, who outpaced everyone during the testdays last month only managed 6th fastest today ahead of the 2 Extreme Speed Ligiers.
GTE-Pro again promises to
be a frantic race with the first 6 cars within a margin of 0.6
seconds. Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander in the #51 Ferrari
outpaced their AF Corse teammates in the #71 Ferrari F458 Italia.
The Aston Martin Vantage of Nygaard and Sorenson took third place
ahead of the 2 Manthey Porsches. In GTE-AM, it's Ferrari/Aston
Martin/Porsche with the championship leading #72 SMP Ferrari ahead of
the #98 Aston and Patrick Dempsey's #77 Porsche 911 RSR in third
starting position.
With the temperatures
rising in the Eiffel and well filled grandstands today, we
should be in for a good race in front of a big crowd tomorrow. The
pitwalk was already very crowded today, it surely seems like the
German motorsport fans are finding their way to the WEC.
The 6 hours of the
Nürburging will start tomorrow at 13:00 (local time).
Kristof Vermeulen
