{"id":123867,"date":"2025-11-08T01:59:21","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T01:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/123867\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T01:59:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T01:59:21","slug":"toyota-takes-first-pole-in-2025-with-1-2-in-qualifying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/123867\/","title":{"rendered":"Toyota takes first pole in 2025 with 1-2 in qualifying"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toyota took its first pole position of the 2025 World Endurance Championship in Bahrain as Kamui Kobayashi<\/a> led home a qualifying 1-2 for the Japanese manufacturer.<\/p>\n

Kobayashi claimed the top spot aboard the #7 Toyota GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar in the 10-minute Hyperpole session on Friday evening for the fastest 10 cars in first qualifying with a best lap of 1m46.826s.<\/p>\n

That shaded the 1m46.977s set by Brendon Hartley<\/a>, who took Toyota\u2019s most recent pole at this race last year, in the sister #8 entry.<\/p>\n

The two Peugeot 9X8 2024 LMHs blocked out the second row of the grid for the Saturday\u2019s Bahrain 8 Hours WEC finale.<\/p>\n

Malthe Jakobsen<\/a> posted a 1m47.166s in the #94 entry to beat team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne<\/a>\u2019s 1m47.208s in the #93 car.<\/p>\n

Alex Lynn<\/a> took fifth with a 1m47.543s in the Jota Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh in which he, Will Stevens<\/a> and Norman Nato<\/a> retain a mathematical chance of taking the 2025 WEC Hypercar title.<\/p>\n

Marco Sorensen<\/a> claimed sixth in the #009 Aston Martin Valkyrie LMH run by The Heart of Racing team<\/a> with a 1m47.624s.<\/p>\n

\"#51 <\/p>\n

#51 Ferrari AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi & #38 Cadillac Hertz Team Jota Cadillac V-Series.R: Earl Bamber, Sebastien Bourdais, Jenson Button<\/p>\n

Photo by: Shameem Fahath \/ Motorsport Network<\/a><\/p>\n

Antonio Giovinazzi<\/a> managed seventh position in the factory AF Corse<\/a> Ferrari<\/a> 499P LMH in which he leads the championship with James Calado<\/a> and Alessandro Pier Guidi<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Julien Andlauer<\/a> ended up eighth in the best of the Penske-run Porsche 963 LMDhs, while Ross Gunn<\/a> and Dries Vanthoor<\/a> filled out the top 10 in the #007 Aston and the #15 WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 LMH.<\/p>\n

Only two of the four crews in with a chance of taking the Hypercar drivers\u2019 title made it into Hyperpole from the opening 12-minute qualifying period.<\/p>\n

The #83 Ferrari run on a satellite basis by AF Corse, which lies second in the points, ended up 12th in Robert Kubica<\/a>\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

The #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport entry, which is third in the standings, finished 18th and last in Hypercar after Kevin Estre<\/a> locked up on his opening push lap.<\/p>\n

Alpine<\/a>, winner last time out in the WEC at Fuji in September, also failed to progress into the second round of qualifying with either of its pair of A424 LMHs.\u00a0Jules Gounon<\/a> and Charles Milesi<\/a> ended up 13th and 15th respectively.<\/p>\n

\"#6 <\/p>\n

#6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963: Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor, Pascal Wherlein<\/p>\n

Photo by: Shameem Fahath \/ Motorsport Network<\/a><\/p>\n

Lexus and the Auto Sport Promotion team took their second LMGT3 pole of the season, Finn Gehrsitz<\/a> following up on his top spot in qualifying at Spa in May.<\/p>\n

Gehrsitz posted two laps good enough for the pole, shaving a couple of tenths from his best lap to get down to a 2m01.661s aboard the #78 Lexus RC F GT3 in Hyperpole.<\/p>\n

That gave him a margin of three tenths over Lorcan Hanafin in the best of the Iron Lynx<\/a> Mercedes-AMG GT3s in second position.<\/p>\n

The Briton\u2019s time of 2m01.987s shaded third-placed Lin Hodenius<\/a> in the Iron Lynx sister car by three hundredths.<\/p>\n

The #21 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 was the only one of the three cars whose crews are in contention for the drivers\u2019 title to make it through into Hyperpole.<\/p>\n

Simon Mann<\/a> ended up eighth the after Francois Heriau took the same position in first qualifying for the bronze-rated driver in each crew.<\/p>\n

Ryan Hardwick<\/a> in the points-leading Manthey Porsche 911 GT3-R ended up 17th of the 18 LMGT3 cars, while Tom van Rompuy<\/a> took 14th in the TF Sport<\/a> Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R that lies in second place in the championship.<\/p>\n

The Bahrain 8 Hours kicks off at 14:00 local time on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

WEC Bahrain 8 Hours – Qualifying results<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toyota took its first pole position of the 2025 World Endurance Championship in Bahrain as Kamui Kobayashi led…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73069,86492,111,139,69,213,46020,86491],"class_list":["post-123867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-bahrain","tag-bahrain-international-circuit","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports","tag-wec","tag-wec-bahrain-toyota-takes-first-pole-in-2025-with-1-2-in-qualifying"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}