Toyota locks out front row at Interlagos

Text: Rick Kiewiet

Images: WEC

It's been a while, but Toyota's back at the front row of the grid for tomorrow's 6h of São Paulo. Kamui Kobayashi put in the fastest lap time in Hyperpole in the #7 Toyota GR010 he shares with Mike Conway and Nyck de Vries. Fellow teammate in the #8, Sebastien Buemi, was 0.122 seconds down on Kobayashi time, which proved enough to stay ahead of the #5 Penske Porsche of Matt Campbell. As it's winter in Brazil, temperatures averaged around a mere 16 degrees Celsius.

Cadillac put in another strong qualifying with p4 for Alex Lynn in the #2, just ahead of Kevin Estre in the second of the Penske Porsches, the #6. First of the upgraded Ferrari's was, no surprise, qualifying ace Antonio Fuoco in the #50. It appears that the updates from Maranello didn't brought the desired effect yet, in terms of speed, as the sister car #51 and winner of the last race in Le Mans, was qualified only 9th by Alessandro Pier Guidi.

Earlier today, Callum Ilott was fastest in FP3 in the #12 JOTA Porsche, but in Hyperpole he only managed the 7th fastest time, followed closely teammate Jenson Button in the #38. Frijns completed the top-10 in the #20 BMW.

Sarah Bovy claimed the Iron Dames' second pole of the season (after Spa) in the #85 Lamborghini, well ahead (almost 4 tenths) of Alex Malykhin's #92 Porsche. The #59 and #95 McLaren's locked out the second row.

Tomorrow's race starts at 11.30 AM local time, at which time it will be 3.30 PM in the UK.