The Toyota Racing team seems to have the qualifying format in the FIA World Endurance Championship well figured out, with the team picking up its third pole position of the season, in only four rounds.

The FIA WEC qualifying format is different from what American fans may be used to in the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship. Teams must nominate two drivers per car to take part in qualifying. The two fastest laps registered by each driver are then added up to get an average lap time.

At the end of today’s 25-minute LMP qualifying session at the Circuit of The Americas, it was the #8 Toyota TS 040 Hybrid (Davidson/Lapierre/Buemi) that came out on top with a best average time of 1:49.093.

The fight for a spot on the front row came down to a close battle between the Porsche Team entries with the #14 Porsche 919 Hybrid (Jani/Dumas/Lieb – 1:50.283) edging out teammates in the #20 car (Bernhard/Webber/Hartley – 1:50.302) by an average of just 0.019 seconds.

The #2 Audi R18 e-tron Quattro (Fassler/Lotterer/Treluyer – 1:50.340) qualified in fourth ahead of the #7 Toyota Racing car (Wuez/Sarrazin/Conway – 1:50.363). The #1 Audi (DiGrassi/Duval/Kristensen – 1:51.456) placed sixth.

In the LM P2 class it was the G-Drive Racing team (Rusinov/Pla/Canal – 1:56.075) that took pole position. ESM Racing (Sharp/Dalziel/Brown – 1:57.262) placed third in their first FIA WEC appearance at COTA.

The GTE qualifying started out in the rain and saw the #51 AF Corse Ferrari Italia (Bruni/Vilander – 2:06.456) climb to the top of the timing charts in the LM GTE pro class. The Corvette Racing entry (Taylor/Taylor/Milner – 2:08.674 qualified seventh in class.

In the LM GTE Am class, the #75 Prospeed Porsche 911 GT3 RSR (Collard/Vaxiviere/ Perrodo) put in an average lap of 2:08.271 to capture pole position.

Round four of the FIA WEC will go green on Saturday, September 20 at 5 pm local time and will be broadcast live on Fox Sports 2.