The #7 Toyota of Kamui Kobayashi takes P1 from the jaws of defeat for the 6 hours of Spa-Francorchamps.
The Hypercar session started in a dramatic way.
Brendan Hartley threw his #8 Toyota off at the top of Raidillon, as he touched the inside curb with his front left tyre, which got the car very twitchy and backwards into the outside tire wall.
Hartley’s off brought out the Red flags with 13 minutes to go in the session.
Earl Bamber nearly did the same through the middle part of Raidillon as he got very squirrelly on his out lap.
Antonio Giovinazzi starting his flying lap spun to the inside of the circuit at turn one and then would block other drivers’ laps as he did his best Austin Power impression trying to turn the car around.
With three minutes to go, Toyota looked in trouble until Kamui Kobayashi put it on the pole with him setting a time of 2m.00.812s only being 0.024s faster than Miguel Molina in the #50 Ferrari AF Corsa.
Toyota had a massive scare though with Giovinazzi going to the top of the timing screens, but went four wheels over the white line at Malmedy, losing him the lap.
Giovinazzi still set a time good enough for third though in the #51 Ferrari AF Corsa, with a time of 2m.00.973s in a messy session for the Italian.
Meanwhile, in LMP2 the pole position went to the #23 United Autosports car, at the hands of Tom Blomqvist who set a time of 2m.05.979, with the team’s second Pole position start of the season.
#43 Team WRT car driven by Louis Deletraz would follow with him only 0.339s off of P1.
Then lining up behind these two is Daniel Kvyat in his #63 Prema Racing Oreca, as he was 0.527s off of Pole in an always-close LMP2 session
The Hypercar class wasn’t the only one with cars going off at Raidillon with PJ Hyett going off in a big way, with him touching the left-hand inside curb, unsettling the car which sent him in 360 frontwards into the outside tyre wall, which ripped the front of the car off.
When the session began again for the LMGTE AM, Ahmad AL Harthy topped the timing screens for ORT by TF in their #25 Aston Martin, with a time of 2m.17.216s.
Lining up along side him is Sarah Bovy in the Iron Dames #85 Porsche, which is the team’s second P2 start of the season, with the other coming at the last round in Portimao.
In the Third position is another of Porsche, the #88 to be exact, with Ryan Hardwick for the Proton Competition setting a time of 2m.19.481s, which was +2.265s off of the P1 time.