Gazoo Team President Kamui Kobayashi has secured pole position for the 2022 Fuji 6 Hours for the #7 Toyota (Conway/Kobayashi/Lopez). At the first appearance of the hypercars on the Fuji Speedway, he set the best time of 1:29.234 minutes. He set this time right away, which was enough for the best grid position.
In the end, he was 20 thousandths of a second faster than Brendon Hartley from the #8 sister car (Buemi/Hartley/Hirakawa), which is starting from second place. The #8 fights against the Alpine #36 (Negrao/Lapierre/Vaxiviere) for the world title. Toyota leaves the option open to use team orders depending on the situation in the race.
Despite all the BoP lawsuits, Alpine managed to outperform the Peugeot 9X8. Matthieu Vaxiviere even came within two tenths of a second of the Toyotas. In the race, however, the Alpine will have to contend with a disadvantage in traffic.
Until then, Toyota had also determined all free practice sessions. Only in the third free practice session in the morning was there no 1-2 with the GR010 Hybrid on their home track, before the order was straightened again in qualifying.
Peugeot one step further
Peugeot looked set to become a serious opponent for Toyota in the fight for pole in FP3. However, the French managed to gain only half a second in qualifying, while Toyota and Alpine found almost a second.
“We’re not far away, but we also know that the last second is the hardest to find,” says Loic Duval from the Peugeot #94 (Duval/Menezes/Rossiter), who is one and a half tenths of a second behind his team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne who had #93 (di Resta/Jensen/Vergne).
“We’re still lacking in the high-speed corners. The balance isn’t what we’d like but it’s a step up compared to Monza. I think we can attack Alpine. Toyota is a step ahead in all conditions. “
Antonio Felix da Costa took the LMP2 pole in the #38 Jota-Oreca (Gonzalez/Felix da Costa/Stevens). He did what Kobayashi did and clocked the time right at the start. In the meantime, he had a half-second lead over the rest of the field, which was still gaining ground as the session progressed.
Nicklas Nielsen drove the #83 AF Corse Oreca (Perrodo/Nielsen/Rovera) 0.280 seconds down on second place on the grid. WRT-Oreca #31 (Gelael/Frijns/Vanthoor) would have been third, but Robin Frijns’ lap time was canceled due to track limits. That threw him back to fourth behind sister car #41 (Andrade/Habsburg/Nato).
Porsche strikes back in qualifying
While Friday in the GTE Pro still belonged to Ferrari, Saturday was all about Porsche: Michael Christensen turned the fastest lap in the #92 Porsche (Christensen/Estre) in 1:36.371 minutes and thus secured the penultimate pole in the history of the class . Most recently, Corvette in Le Mans and Ferrari in Monza had interrupted the pole streak of the Porsche 911 RSR-19.
James Calado was almost two tenths behind in the #51 AF Corse Ferrari (Pier Guidi/Calado). Also in the second row it says Porsche – Ferrari. This means that the three vehicles still fighting for the world title will start from the first three places. The Corvette #64 (Milner/Tandy) brought up the rear after the BoP braking after the Monza victory.
In the GTE Am, the #33 TF Sport Aston-Martin (Keating/Chaves/Sörensen) reported back with pole after the spectacular rollover in Monza. This is Ben Keating’s third pole in five races. It is one of the TF Sport chassis from the European Le Mans series. The “Iron Dames” landed in second place.
The start of the race is at 4 a.m. CEST, so the finish line is at 10 a.m. sport.de will broadcast the start of the race in a free live stream, NITRO will show the finale of the race from 8:00 a.m. on free TV.