The pair of GR010 Hybrids from Toyota blocked the front row of the grid for the 90th edition of the FIA World Endurance Championship, with Hartley taking first place in machine number 8 which he shares with Sebastien Buemi and Ryo Hirakawa with a time of 3m24.408s. .
This compares to a 3m23.900 with which Kamui Kobayashi took pole for last year’s race.
Kobayashi aimed to get a fifth pole in six years aboard Toyota No. 7, but reached 0.177 seconds with his best lap of 3m24.585s.
Behind Toyota, Alpine’s A480-Gibson LMP1 took third place on the grid thanks to a 3m24.850s effort by Nicolas Lapierre, which was good enough to beat the two Glickenhaus 007 LMHs.
Hartley led the way after the initial runs with a 3m25.213s, but with just a few minutes to go before the end of the 30-minute penalty shootout which was surpassed by the 3m24.850s set by alpine rider Lapierre.
Kobayashi returned to take first place in Toyota with a 3m24.585s that was initially scratched by a track boundary breach, but which was restored before being beaten by Hartley.
Glickenhaus driver Ryan Briscoe briefly took second place with a 3m25.841s behind the wheel of car # 709, but dropped to fourth place on the final balance ahead of Olivier Pla, who was only able to manage 3m26. 359s in Example # 708.
WRT, Corvette gets class sticks
The pole of the LMP2 category went to WRT, as Robin Frijns overtook more than a second of the opposition with a best time of 3m28.394s at the wheel of the # 31 Oreca 07-Gibson which he shares with Sean Gelael and Rene Rast.
Norman Nato made a two for the Belgian team in car # 42 Realteam by WRT with his best time of 3m29.697s ahead of Filipe Albuquerque in the best of United Autosports machines, car # 22.
Completing the Hyperpole order in LMP2 was Antonio Felix da Costa’s JOTA car number 38, Louis Deletraz at Prema’s only entrance and Alex Lynn at United’s number 23 machine.
Corvette Racing got a front-row lock on GTE Pro, as Nick Tandy set the only under-3m50 effort in the class behind the wheel of the American brand’s # 64 C8.R.
The best Tandy of 3m49.985s compared to the 3m50.177s set by Antonio Garcia in the sister car # 63 and about 3m50.377s of the best Porsche 911 RSR-19s of the work in third place, the example # 91 by Frederic Makowiecki.
Porsche swept the second row of the grid when Laurens Vanthoor took fourth place in car number 92 ahead of AF Corse’s two Ferrari 488 GTE Evos, Antonio Fuoco leading James Calado.
The pole in GTE Am went to Ferrari AF Corse driver Vincent Abril for just under two-tenths of Mikkel Jensen in the Kessel Racing example.
Also read: