Le Mans 24: Kazuki Nakajima's Flying Lap Puts The No. 8 Toyota On Pole

It will be a front row lockout for Toyota at the 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans tomorrow. The No. 8 Toyota with drivers Kazuki Nakajima, Sebastien Buemi and Fernando Alonso behind the wheel, will start the race from the pole position on Saturday. Nakajima put up a brilliant initial qualifying time of 3m17.270s during the Wednesday's first session but managed to improve on the same by a brilliant two seconds with his first flying lap in the final part of qualifying on Thursday. This will be Toyota's fourth pole at Le Mans, and the first for Nakajima, Buemi and Alonso. Starting second will be Toyota's second car on the grid, with the No. 7 racer piloted by Mike Conway, Kobayashi, and Jose Maria Lopez, having set a time of 3m17.377s.

(Nakajima, Buemi and Alonso will start on pole tomorrow in the No. 8 Toyota)

Behind both the Toyotas will be Rebellion Racing's Andre Lotterer, Neel Jani and Bruno Senna with a time of 3m18.449s. The Rebellion racer is the first non-hybrid LMP1 car here and finished almost four seconds behind the No. 8 Toyota. Interestingly, both the Rebellion cars had qualified 3-4, in a second row lockout, but the No. 3 Rebellion's time was removed. Thomas Laurent along with teammates Mathias Beche and Gustavo Menezes, set a time 0.875s slower than the No. 7 Toyota, but the officials removed the lap after the session ended as a result of Laurent missing the scrutineering light in the pitlane. The car will now start fifth behind SMP Racing.

With the second Rebellion promoted to third, the SMP Racing race car with Stephan Sarrazin will now start fourth tomorrow having set a time of 3m19.483s. Meanwhile, DragonSpeed's No. 10 car will start sixth behind the Rebellion with drivers Henrik Hedman, Ben Hanley and Renger Van Der Zande. Ths second SMP Racing car will start with Vitaly Petrov, Mikhail Aleshin and Jenson Button driving for the team. The eighth car to start at Le Mans 24 in the LMP1 class will be the sole entry from ByKolles Enso CLM, followed by Ginetta's No. 6 racer with Oliver Turvey, Alex Brundle and Oliver Rowland behind the wheel.

(Rebellion Racing with 2 cars will start third and fifth respectively in the LMP1 class)

The No. 48 Idec Sport Oreca was the fastest of the LMP2 class cars and put up the 10th fastest time with drivers Paul Lafargue, Paul Loup Chatin, and Memo Rojas. The No. 31 Porsche 911 RSR was the fastest GTE Am car piloted by  Gianmaria Bruni, Fred Makowiecki, and Richard Lietz, while the fastest GTE Pro car was that off Dempsey-Proton racing's No. 88 Porsche RSR with  Khaled Al Qubaisi, Matteo Cairoli and Giorgio Roda in the driver's seat.