Webber Porsche claims Silverstone WEC pole

Mark Webber’s Porsche 919 will start the FIA World Endurance Championship season opener from pole position as the German manufacturer completed a front row lockout at Silverstone.

Unable to match the pace of Audi in practice, Porsche saved their best until the 20 minute qualifying session with Webber and team-mate Brendon Hartley combining to set a session best two lap average of 1.39.721s.

The time proved to be more than six tenths of a second quicker than the #18 sister 919 entry of Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb.

Audi and Toyota will share the second row for Sunday’s Silverstone six hour with the Oliver Jarvis/Loic Duval/Lucas Di Grassi R18 third, just 0.030s ahead of the Anthony Davidson/Sebastien Buemi/Kazuki Nakajima lead Toyota.

The #7 Audi will start from fifth ahead of the second Toyota in sixth.

G-Drive Racing dominated the LMP2 class with the #28 entry of Gustavo Yucaman/Pipo Derani/Ricardo Gonzalez took pole by 0.062s from the team’s second entry of Sam Bird/Julien Canal/Roman Rusinov.

The KCMG Oreca Nissan in the hands of Richard Bradley, Matt Howson and Nick Tandy was third more than a second adrift of the leading G-Drive operation.

Following his late call up to the event, David Brabham will start from 15th on the grid in the #31 Extreme Speed Motorsports entry, he will share with American duo Ed Brown and Jonathon Fogarty.

Aston Martin emerged as the pace setters with the British marque claiming pole positions in both the GTE Pro and Amateur categories.

Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen took their Vantage V8 took the GTE Pro pole ahead of team-mates Alex MacDowall, Fernando Rees and Kiwi Richie Stanaway.

The Vantage of Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana claimed the honours in GTE Am.

VIDEO: Porsche Qualifying wrap