Audi completed a front row sweep in qualifying for the opening round of the 2016 FIA World Endurance Championship at Silverstone, beating Porsche who had dominated Friday practice. Marcel Fassler, Andre Lotterer, and Benoit Treluyer's combined time was quicker than the sister car of Lucas di Grassi, Loic Duval, and Oliver Jarvis. The pole for Audi marked the first time they were on pole since 2013 which Porsche's failure to top the times was the first time since Fuji last year.
The day began with snow curtailing running in the third practice session of the weekend before rain took hold of the circuit for much of the morning. Porsche were unable to replicate their form from Friday, a day which remained mostly dry. Toyota meanwhile struggled to challenge the top four places as both cars hit problems having never run in the wet before today.
The privateer LMP1 class honours when the the ByKolles team of Simon Trummer, Oliver Webb, and James Rossiter with the pair of Rebellion R-Ones suffered - Both will start Sunday's race towards the back of the field.
In the highly competitive LMP2 class, the Russian G-Drive team took pole ahead of the fastest of the two Extreme Speed Motorsports Ligier entries.
GTE Pro honours went to Ferrari who were set for a convincing one-two until a dashboard alarm went off when Gianmaria Bruni was on track, bringing an early end to his running despite team mate James Calado setting the fastest time. the Sister Ferrari of Davide Rigon and Sam Bird inherited pole ahead of the Porsche of Richard Lietz and Michael Christensen while the Ford GT of Billy Johnson, Stefan Mucke, and Olivier Pla took an impressive third on the new Ford's debut. Meanwhile, GTE Am pole went to the Porsche of Klaus Bachler and Khaled Al Qubais.
Image: Dominik Wilde
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