Qualifying this week showed off the incredible speed that the three Porsche 919 hybrid prototypes have. It’s always a ferocious battle between Porsche and their German cousins, Audi, and qualifying honours go to Porsche, who swept the top three starting positions, leaving Audi, and everyone else, for that matter, in their wake.
Swiss ace Neel Jani’s scintillating track record lap of 3m16.887s on Wednesday evening rocketed the #18 Porsche that he shares with Frenchman Romain Dumas and Germany’s Marc Leib to the top of the sheets in the most impressive fashion imagine.
Australia’s Mark Webber will see his #19 Porsche start from second. Like their sister car, the #19 couldn’t improve on it’s Wednesday time, set by German Timo Bernhard. The third man in the car which Webber – and all of Australia – hope will take him to victory after late mechanical dramas stopped them in their tracks whilst leading inside the last four hours a year ago, is New Zealander Brendon Hartley.
Porsche have brought a third entry to Le Mans, the #17 machine, crewed by Brit Nick Tandy, another Kiwi, Earl Bamber and German Formula One star, Niko Hulkenberg. It will start in third, leading the trio of Team Joest Audi R18 e-tron quattro machines.
In a twenty-four hour race, qualifying means little, and despite Porsche having an obvious and large advantage when it comes to overall speed, there are some serious reliability questions hanging over the Porsche squad, and it will take an absolutely perfect run for Porsche (or anyone else, for that matter) to beat the Audis, whose reliability at this race is legendary. They’re not always the fastest cars at the start, but they’re nearly always still running at the end as their competition falls by the wayside. We’ve seen it time and time again.
For mine, the car most likely to cross the line first at 3pm on Sunday afternoon local time is the #7 Audi driven by defending champions Marcel Fassler, Andre Lotterer and Benoit Treluyer. We haven’t seen such a trio of drivers at Audi since the early 2000s, when the combination of Tom Kristensen, Alan McNish and Dindo Capello. The powerful Fassler/Lotterer/Treluyer combination has the chance to be as good as that legendary group and even better. They’re fast, smart and reliable, and know how to win at Le Mans. It’s a formidable mixture.
Further down the order, sit the Toyota squad, who’ve been starved for pace all week so far, and look at long odds to contend for the win. Their fastest car was 2.5 seconds behind the slowest Audi and a whopping 6.656 seconds behind the pole-sitting Porsche. Of course, stranger things have happened, but early signs aren’t good for the Japanese squad.
One of the intriguing storylines of the 2015 race is the debut of Nissan, who bring three LMP1 machines to Le Mans, and brought up the rear in the LMP1 class, qualifying. This was expected, but the development of the revolutionary Nissan GT-R LM Nismo machines as the race goes on will be very interesting to watch.
LMP2 qualifying saw the class leader actually qualify faster than the slowest LMP1 machine. The KCMG Oreca Nissan of Englishmen Matthew Howson and Spencer Bradley and Frenchman Nicolas Lapierre. They were also nearly a second ahead of their nearest competition, setting the pole lap of 3m38.032s on Wednesday night, and spending most of Thursday’s session in the garage with suspension problems.
GTE-Pro should be a frenetic race for the entirety, and qualifying went the way of Aston Martin Racing, with the #98 Aston Martin Vantage V8 of young guns Brazilian Fernando Rees, New Zealander Richie Stanaway and Great Britain’s Alex McDowall. Ferrari are close behind, as are the Manthey Porsche squad, who have struggled for speed, in what’s been one of the surprise storylines of the weekend.
There was drama in GTE-Pro qualifying, too: the #63 Corvette of Australia’s Ryan Briscoe, Brazilian Antonio Garcia and Dane Jan Magnussen involved in a huge crash at the Porsche Curves with Magnussen behind the wheel. The car has since been withdrawn, ending the hopes of Briscoe and his co-drivers to complete a rare sports car triple, winning the 24 Hours of Daytona, the 12 Hours of Sebring and then Le Mans.
Finally, to GTE-Am, where professional drivers are paired with amateurs, and the #83 AF Corse Ferrari of Portugal’s Rui Aguas, Frenchman Francois Perrodo and Italian veteran Emanuelle Collard leading off the fourth class.
Naturally, qualifying doesn’t mean much in a race that runs an entire day. Aside from the prestige of being first in class or overall, there’s little gained by going fast over a short session, and you would be wise not to read too much into outright speed compared to reliability.
That’s why I’m leaning towards Audi over Porsche. Dr Wolfgang Ulrich’s squad is pretty much bulletproof. They’re as professional an outfit as we’ve ever seen at Le Mans, and as much as I’d love to see Mark Webber win, I have a feeling that #7 car will get it done.
Join The Roar for updates, commentary and analysis of the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans from 10:30pm AEST on Saturday evening.
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