Practice times appared to indicate an upset could be on the cards in qualifying… That was until Kazuki Nakajima sent a thunderbolt across Stuttgart’s bows by stealing pole position for Toyota.
Nakajima (partnered by Stephane Sarrazin and Alex Wurz), was looking extremely rapid during Thursdays fraught practice sessions, but during the night, he lowered his original banker to 3min 21.789sec and just under half a second tenths quicker than the best Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb could offer in the 919 Hybrid.
Audi could only manage 5th and 6th in the wake of their tumultuous practice which saw Loic Duval’s shocking air-born crash at the Porsche Curves (Marc Gene was drafted in from Jota Sport to replace him) and Lucas di Grassi’s nose-crunching effort. However the bigger story was yet to unfold…
Qualifying