Both Audi R18 sports cars on front row at season opener
Flawless performance by both driver squads on wet track
Audi Sport Team Joest ready for race one
Audi has established the best starting base for itself for the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) season opener in Silverstone. Car number â7â of Marcel Fässler/AndrĂŠ Lotterer/BenoĂŽt TrĂŠluyer (CH/D/F) set the fastest time, trailed by Lucas di Grassi/LoĂŻc Duval/Oliver Jarvis (BR/F/GB) in number â8â with a gap of just one tenth of a second.
For Audi, it has been the twelfth occasion of setting the fastest time in the FIA WEC which has been held since 2012.
Snow in the morning and a stopped third free practice, wet tarmac and a track temperature of six degrees centigrade around noon: the conditions for the first qualifying session in the 2016 season were anything but ideal.
Still, Audi scored the first point of the season for setting the best time in the final qualifying session at Silverstone in the UK. âCongratulations to our driver squads and to the team on todayâs performance,â said Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich. âOur team perfectly prepared the cars and our drivers made the best of these challenging conditions.â
AndrĂŠ Lotterer on rain tires initially took the top spot. âWe had no idea what to expect. But we made the right decisions and were fast enough,â said the German. Subsequently, Marcel Fässler took over the number â7â hybrid sports car.
âQualifying was fun. The car gave us very good feedback. âThank youâ to the team thatâs been putting in a lot of long and hard hours lately,â said the Swiss. LoĂŻc Duval in the sister car was similarly fast in spite of initially having been slowed by some rivals. âUnfortunately, I didnât find a clear lap in the beginning and afterwards the tires were a little worn,â said the Frenchman. Lucas di Grassi in car number â8â subsequently battled for position one up to the last lap.
âWe nearly made it, but we can be happy this way as well. Our race car feels well balanced,â the Brazilian said.
On Sunday, the hybrid sports car featuring a new design and delivering some 1,000 hp of system output will have to prove its potential across the distance of a six-hour race. The first of nine FIA WEC rounds will start at 12:00 local time (13:00 CEST) on April 17. The race decision can be watched on Eurosport in a live 130-minute television broadcast starting at 17:00 CEST.
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Qualifying resultsÂ
1 Fässler/Lotterer/TrÊluyer (Audi R18) 1m 53.204s
2 Di Grassi/Duval/Jarvis (Audi R18) 1m 53.308s
3 Bernhard/Hartley/Webber (Porsche) 1m 54.150s
4 Dumas/Jani/Lieb (Porsche) 1m 54.266s
5 Conway/Kobayashi/Sarrazin (Toyota) 1m 58.200s
6 Buemi/Davidson/Nakajima (Toyota) 2m 00.109s
7 Rossiter/Trummer/Webb (CLM-AER) 2m 08.332s
8 Berthon/Rast/Rusinov (Oreca-Nissan) 2m 08.479s
9 Cumming/Dalziel/Derani (Ligier-Nissan) 2m 09.632s
10 Albuquerque/Gonzalez/Senna (Ligier-Nissan) 2m 10.295s.
