Porsche Takes First Three Places On Le Mans Grid, Breaks Qualifying Lap Record

Porsche 919 Hybrid is clearly the fastest car among this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans contenders, and the three hybrid racers proved it in qualifying.

The No. 18 Porsche 919 Hybrid driven by Neel Jani set a record qualifying lap for the current track length of 13.629 kilometers (8.46 miles) in 3min16.887s, beating Peugeot’s pole-position time from 2008 (3min18.513s).

The other two LMP1 Porsches closely followed the No. 18 car: the No. 17 car driven by Timo Bernhard set a lap time of 3min17.767s, while the No. 19 Porsche 919 Hybrid with Nick Tandy behind the wheel lapped the circuit in 3min18.862s.

This is the 17th pole position for Porsche in Le Mans and the first one since 1997. Furthermore, it is the ninth time since 1968 that three Porsche race cars have locked out the front of the grid for the Le Mans 24-Hours with a one-two-three. This happened last in 1988. Starting drivers on Saturday will be Timo Bernhard, Neel Jani and Nico Hülkenberg.

The Porsches were followed by the Audi R18 e-tron quattro race cars, which will start from 4th, 5th and 6th on the grid, with the Toyotas behind in 7th and 8th. The three Nissan GT-R LM Nismos were way off the pace and couldn’t even compete with LMP2 cars. As a result they will start the race from 30th, 31st and 32nd.

In the LMP2 class, the fastest car was KCMG’s Oreca-Nissan with 3m38.032s, while Aston Martin Racing’s No. 99 Vantage GTE lead the GTE Pro class with a 3m54.928s lap. Finally, the fastest car in the GTE Am class was another Aston Martin, the No. 98 Vantage GTE which posted a 3m55.102s qualifying lap.

The race starts on Saturday at 3 p.m. local time.