The sister car, number 7, which had started the Silverstone and Nürburgring races from pole position, had to admit defeat by 0.281 seconds and will start from position three. André Lotterer (D) on his first outing achieved the fastest lap of all drivers of 1m 24.763s. “I’m happy even though I could have done a little better in the first sector. I made another attempt afterwards but didn’t improve anymore.” His teammate Marcel Fässler said he didn’t find an ideal rhythm on the 4.304-kilometer track. “On my first lap, I made sure not to overtax the car, but the time was not good enough, so I wanted to up the ante but, unfortunately, made several small mistakes in the process,” said the Swiss.
Both Audi R18 cars were the only race cars in the field with fastest lap times better than 1m 25s. On Saturday, the teams will be tackling a great challenge. Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez is located on an altitude of nearly 2,300 meters. The air is much thinner there than at sea level. Audi has technically adapted the R18 while the drivers will be subjected to major physical strains during the 6-hour race. As Benoît Tréluyer is skipping the race in order to regain his full physical fitness following a bicycle accident, Fässler and Lotterer are going to contest the event as a team of two. Work in the sister car will be shared again as usual by the three Audi drivers di Grassi/Duval/Jarvis.
The race will start at 13:30 local time (20:30 CEST). Eurosport will air full-length coverage of the 6 Hours of Mexico live and free of charge in Germany: http://video.eurosport.de/wec/video-live.shtml
Qualifying results
1 Di Grassi/Duval/Jarvis (Audi R18) 1m 25.069s
2 Dumas/Jani/Lieb (Porsche) 1m 25.111s
3 Fässler/Lotterer (Audi R18) 1m 25.350s
4 Bernhard/Hartley/Webber (Porsche) 1m 25.400s
5 Buemi/Nakajima (Toyota) 1m 25.960s
6 Conway/Kobayashi/Sarrazin (Toyota) 1m 26.183s
7 Imperatori/Kraihamer/Tuscher (Rebellion) 1m 29.909s
8 Kaffer/Trummer/Webb (CLM-AER) 1m 31.674s
9 Albuquerque/Gonzalez/Senna (Ligier-Nissan) 1m 35.485s
10 Lapierre/Menezes/Richelmi (Alpine-Nissan) 1m 35.819s