Alonso, Nakajima take Sebring WEC pole

Fernando Alonso and Kazuki Nakajima teamed up to head up a front-row lock-out for Toyota in qualifying for the 1,000 Miles of Sebring on Thursday night, marking their fourth pole position of the FIA World Endurance Championship season.

In the first WEC qualifying of the calendar year, Alonso managed to set the pace through the night qualifying session at Sebring with a best time of 1m40.124s in the #8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid, beating the previous LMP1 qualifying record set back in 2013 by four seconds.

Alonso combined with co-driver Nakajima to record an average of 1m40.142s, giving the duo pole by four-tenths of a second from Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez in the sister #7 Toyota entry.

SMP Racing managed to secure third place for the start of Friday's race with Stephane Sarrazin and Egor Orudzhev in the #17 BR Engineering BR1 AER, beating the #3 Rebellion R13 Gibson. Brendon Hartley qualified fifth upon his WEC return with SMP Racing in the team's sister #11 entry.

Jackie Chan DC Racing took a one-two finish in LMP2 qualifying, led by Gabriel Aubry and Stephane Richelmi in the #38 Oreca 07 Gibson, with Will Stevens and David Heinemeier-Hansson sitting six-tenths of a second back in the team's #38 car.

Porsche took pole in GTE-Pro by two-tenths of a second ahead of Ford, led by Kevin Estre and Michael Christensen in the #92 Porsche 911 RSR, while Dempsey-Proton Racing claimed GTE-Am pole with Christian Ried and Matt Campbell in the #77 Porsche.

GTE qualifying was interrupted by a red flag following a heavy crash for Luis Perez-Companc in Clearwater Racing's #61 Ferrari 488 GTE that left the car with damage to the front of the car.