First pole of Le Mans Hypercar era for Toyota/Michelin

A perfect lap during this evening’s Hyperpole shootout saw Kamui Kobayashi put Toyota and Michelin at the front of the grid for Saturday’s Le Mans 24 Hours. The N°7 GR010-Hybrid (Conway/Kobayashi/Lopez) claimed the team’s fifth pole in a row and the first of the new Hypercar era. The N°8 sister car was second, ahead of the N°36 Alpine and N°708 Glickenhaus. The five Hypercar prototypes were covered by just three seconds. Porsche/Michelin clinched both the LMGTE Pro and Am poles.

Kobayashi’s first flying lap for Toyota in Thursday evening’s Hyperpole shootout (a new Le Mans qualifying format introduced last year) sufficed to bag the Hypercar era’s first-ever pole position. As was the plan for these new-generation machines, his time of 3m23.900s for the 13.626-kilometer track was some six seconds slower than his record-breaking effort of 2017, but perhaps closer than many had been expecting to the Japanese make’s benchmark with the former LMP1 hybrid prototype!

At the wheel of the N°8 car, Brendon Hartley completed his quickest lap less than 3/10ths of a second short to ensure another all-Toyota/MICHELIN Pilot Sport front-row Le Mans start.

“We wanted to start the first Le Mans 24 Hours of the Hypercar era from pole position, and we have achieved that,” smiled Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Technical Director Pascal Vasselon after the session. “It was a strong lap by Kamui and the conditions perfectly matched the window of the tire-specification we chose.”

The other Hypercar contenders finished in the immediate slipstream of the Japanese cars, with the N°36 Alpine, and N°708 and N°709 Glickenhaus prototypes in third, fourth and fifth places, blanketed by a mere 1.4 seconds. The proximity of the five cars’ times points to a particularly interesting race this weekend as the famous French race opens a new chapter of its unique history.

Porsche/Michelin ruled the roost in both LMGTE classes, with Dries Vanthoor pocketing Pro’s top spot in the N°72 Hub Auto Racing 919 RSR-19 (Vanthoor/Parente/Martin), while the N°52 Ferrari/Michelin and N°64 Corvette/Michelin made it three different carmakers on the evening’s rostrum, split by barely 2/10ths of a second.

Meanwhile, Porsche/Michelin locked out the top-three places in the LMGTE Am order which was spearheaded by the N°88 Dempsey Proton Racing car of Andlauer/Bastien/Arnold.

The Hyperpole run was followed by the week’s final two hours of free practice and, in accordance with Le Mans tradition, the drivers will now have Friday free (except for their various PR and media commitments) to get in some welcome rest ahead of the weekend’s twice-around-the-clock classic which kicks off on Saturday afternoon at 4pm CEST.