WEC: Audi's Allan McNish claims pole at Spa
Gary Watkins
FIAWEC.com
Allan McNish drove the No. 2 Audi R18 E-tron Quattro to the pole position for Saturday's World Endurance Championship race at Spa in Belgium.
Allan McNish on Friday claimed a debut pole position aboard the new Audi R18 E-tron Quattro for Saturday's Spa 6 Hours, the second round of the new FIA World Endurance Championship.
The Scot set a best time of 2 minutes, 1.578 seconds on his second flying lap in the hybrid Audi. That put him just more than half a second clear of Marco Bonanomi in the best of the nonhybrid Audi R18 Ultras.
McNish, who won the opening WEC round at Sebring in March with Tom Kristensen and Rinaldo Capello, said, "It is quite a big day for Audi because it has given us our first milestone pole with the E-tron technology. It was quite special for me in particular because myself, Dindo and Tom also took the first pole for the Audi diesel car [at Sebring in 2006]."
Audi swept the front two rows of the grid. Marcel Fässler ended up third in the second hybrid R18, while Loïc Duval was the final Audi qualifier in the second conventional turbodiesel.
Neel Jani headed the gasoline-powered privateers in the best of the Rebellion Racing Lola-Toyota coupes. His lap of 2:04.234 was nearly three seconds slower than the Audi pole time.
Australian John Martin claimed pole position at the head of the 18-car LMP2 field. His time of 2:09.302 in the ADR-Delta ORECA-Nissan 03 gave him the pole by just four-hundredths of a second from James Rossiter in the fastest of the two Lotus LMP2 team's Lolas.
GTE Pro honors went to Frederic Makowiecki in the Luxury Racing Ferrari 458 Italia. The Frenchman ended up four-tenths ahead of Giancarlo Fisichella in the lead AF Corse Ferrari.
Porsche driver Nicolas Armindo pipped Marco Cioci's AF Corse to the GTE-Am-class pole.
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