Brendon Hartley will start the Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps from second after the sister Toyota Hypercar snagged the season’s first pole position.
The new ten minute qualifying format limited teams to using just one driver per car.
Given the length of Spa, drivers would only have time for one flying lap, with Kamui Kobayashi reeling off a time that was 0.5s quicker than teammate Kazuki Nakajima.
Hartley, who is co-driving with Nakajima and Sebastien Buemi, has never won a World Endurance Race at Spa, but is a strong position for the start of tomorrow’s race.
Filipe Albuquerque was a further second slower than Nakajima and will line-up third. Though he does seal pole position in the LMP2 class in the progress.
The third and final Hypercar entry is the ‘grandfathered’ ex-LMP1 machine run by Alpine.
In the hands of Nicolas Lapierre for a last gasp effort, the French squad mustered the fourth best time.
Jaxon Evans is embarking on the start of his first full WEC campaign this weekend.
The Kiwi is sharing the No.77 Dempsey-Proton Porsche with Christian Ried and Matt Campbell in the GTE-AM class.
Unfortunately, Reid lost control of the car at the top of Eau Rouge just three minutes into qualifying.
The car sustained heavy damage but Reid walked away from the crash unharmed.
Proton are currently working to have the car back in action for the race, with a long night of repairs ahead of them.
The Six Hours of Bahrain is scheduled to start at 11.30 pm and can been seen live on Sky Sport pop-up channel 602.
