Porsche will start tomorrow’s FIA World Endurance Championship from the front row after dominating qualifying at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium today.

The reigning world champions Timo Bernhard (Germany), Brendon Hartley (New Zealand) and Mark Webber (Australia) claimed pole position with their number 1 car for Saturday’s six-hour race. Next to them on the grid at Spa is the sister-car number 2 of Romain Dumas (France), Neel Jani (Switzerland) and Marc Lieb (Fermany).

In the WEC the average of the respective best laps of two drivers counts for the grid position. In Spa Bernhard/Hartley (car number 1 / 1:55.793 minutes) and Jani/Lieb (car number 2 / 1:56.590 minutes) were the qualifying drivers for Porsche.

It is the first pole position in 2016 for the 919 and its 13th pole since the prototypes’ debut in 2014. For the Bernhard/Hartley/Webber trio it is the 7th pole position in total.

“I managed to put a pretty good lap together and Timo did almost the same lap time,” Hartley said.

“But we didn’t expect such a gap. In the first practice session we were not happy with the balance of the car and the improvement since is a great team effort. We have now scored our first championship point for pole and want full points tomorrow.

“That’s the goal. After my accident in Silverstone our championship title defence starts here in Spa.”

Toyota will start third with its No.6 machine of Stephane Sarrazin/Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi with Audi’s Lucas di Grassi/Loic Duval and Oliver Jarvis fourth fastest.

Other class leaders qualifying included the G-Drive Racing Ligier Nissan of Romain Rusinov, Nathanael Berthon and Rene Rast in LM P2; Davide Rigon and Sam Bird for Ferrari in LMGTE Pro and Aston Martin Racing’s Paul Dalla Lana/Pedro Lamy and Mathias Lauda in LMGTE Am.

Tomorrow’s second round of the 2016 FIA World Endurance championship goes green at 8:30 (US eastern time) / 14:30 local time in Belgium. The race can be seen in the US live streamed with subscription on the FIA WEC app and shown in part on Fox Sports 2.

Find out what @ollyjarvis said after qualifying. We race at 14:30 CEST tomorrow. #WEC #WEC6hSpa #LeagueofPerformancehttps://t.co/BlI9BICerS

— Audi Sport (@Audi__Sport) May 6, 2016

7th @FIAWEC pole position for World Champions @AussieGrit @Timo_Bernhard @BrendonHartley and their #919hybrid pic.twitter.com/eVY1owEGJb

— Porsche LMP1 Team (@Porsche_Team) May 6, 2016

Qualifying through the lens: here are some of the image highlights from today’s action at Spa! #WEC6hSpa @FIAWEC pic.twitter.com/Wu8GLPgm2E

— TOYOTA WEC Team (@Toyota_Hybrid) May 6, 2016

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