◾Lucas di Grassi/Loïc Duval fastest in number 8 Audi R18

◾André Lotterer/Marcel Fassler fifth

Seven races, five fastest times in qualifying: The Audi R18 is the benchmark in qualifying in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) this year. In Japan, Audi managed setting the fourth best time in succession.

Lucas di Grassi/Loïc Duval/Oliver Jarvis (BR/F/GB) will start the 6-hour race at Fuji on Sunday at 11:00 local time from the top spot. For the second time after Mexico, the driver trio secured pole position – this time, by a very narrow margin of 25 thousandths of a second. 'My tires were best at the beginning, but I had to abort my first lap because I hit traffic. I'm obviously happy that it was still enough in the end,' di Grassi said. His teammate Loïc Duval took over the cockpit and defended the top spot. 'From the practice sessions, we knew how close it would be,' said the Frenchman. 'Lucas was a little unfortunate with traffic, whereas things went well in my case. The result is a great team performance because we got everything right on the mark – our engineers and mechanics, as well as us drivers.'

For the sister car, number 7, qualifying was a little more difficult at Fuji. André Lotterer and Benoît Tréluyer had a deficit of 0.286 seconds to the top in the end. 'We're still a little puzzled over this,' said Lotterer. 'The car was running without any problem, but we simply didn't achieve the same lap times as our sister car.' Benoît Tréluyer was not completely happy with his trials: 'Twice, other cars got in my way, so I lost my concentration a little. When I attacked once more afterwards I slightly got off the line in turn 15. That meant a better result wasn't possible today.'

Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich expressed delight with the performance of his team: 'We saw a completely open qualifying in which the lap times kept improving and we were ultimately leading by a narrow margin. This shows what's basically possible with the Audi R18. On the other hand, over a racing distance of six hours, a lot of other factors will come into play on Sunday. We're wishing for the race to become a similar thriller as the qualifying session.'

The 6-hour race will start on Sunday at 11:00 local time (04:00 CEST). The fans in Germany can watch the entire race on the internet free of charge by live streaming on Eurosport. In addition, the channel will be airing live television coverage of the final stage from 08:30 to 10:15 on Eurosport 1 in Germany. Audi will be keeping its fans up to speed on Facebook (AudiSport) and Twitter (@audisport).

Qualifying results

1 Di Grassi/Duval/Jarvis (Audi R18) 1m 23.570s

2 Bernhard/Hartley/Webber (Porsche) 1m 23.595s

3 Buemi/Davidson/Nakajima (Toyota) 1m 23.739s

4 Conway/Kobayashi/Sarrazin (Toyota) 1m 23.781s

5 Fassler/Lotterer/Tréluyer (Audi R18) 1m 23.856s

6 Dumas/Jani/Lieb (Porsche) 1m 24.134s

7 Imperatori/Kraihamer/Tuscher (Rebellion) 1m 28.837s

8 Kaffer/Trummer/Webb (CLM-AER) 1m 29.827s

9 Brundle/Rusinov/Stevens (Oreca-Nissan) 1m 31.698s

10 Lapierre/Menezes/Richelmi (Alpine-Nissan) 1m 31.919s

Photo credit: Audi Motorsport
posted on conceptcarz.com

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