Forty-nine years ago, Jo Siffert from Switzerland became the first driver to put Porsche into pole position at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, at the wheel of a 908, the German manufacturer’s first prototype built for an outright win.

However, the specific nature of the 24 Hours circuit and the changes to its layout down the years mean that the current qualifying lap record is not, in fact, the fastest ever time clocked! Two months after passing the 250 kph average lap speed barrier during preliminary testing in April 1971, Mexican Pedro Rodríguez repeated the feat in qualifying with a time of 3:13.9 at an average of 250.069 kph.

In 1985, German Hans-Joachim Stuck took pole position in 3:14.80, but averaged 251.815 kph. As the track layout had changed since 1971, adding 157 m to the lap distance, it is this average speed – rather than the actual time on the clock – that has been the benchmark for the fastest qualifying lap record at the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the last 32 years.

The race has developed into a twice-around-the-clock sprint these days, but winning pole position has never been a sure-fire guarantee of success at Le Mans. For example, Rodríguez and his British co-driver Jackie Oliver retired in 1971, while Hans-Joachim Stuck and Derek Bell finished third in 1985.

Neel Jani, who started from pole position in 2015 and 2016, can also testify to this fact: “Pole position isn’t really that important at Le Mans, but it’s a matter of prestige. In terms of the actual race, it doesn’t mean anything at all, because Romain (Dumas), Marc (Lieb) and I set off from pole in 2015 before encountering technical issues and finishing fifth.”  In 2016, however, the trio snatched an unlikely double-whammy of pole + outright win in the very last minutes of the race as a result of Kazuki Nakajima’s well-documented woes in the Toyota TS050 HYBRID.

This year, Swiss qualifying ace Jani will be sharing the #1 Porsche 919 Hybrid with British driver Nick Tandy and André Lotterer, who won at Le Mans in 2011, 2012 and 2014. “I set the pole-winning time and won in 2012,” the German proudly recalls. “Pole position grabs the headlines and it’s also good for morale.” The previous year, his Audi teammate Benoît Tréluyer set the fastest time in qualifying. “My first win in 2011 was extraordinary,” Lotterer enthuses. “It was a crazy race with the leadership changing hands forty times, and a slow puncture at the end which threatened to upset our strategy and cost us our win.”

Lotterer, who holds the record for the fastest in-race lap (all track configurations), will once again pull out all the stops to seize pole position this week before battling it out for victory, as will his co-driver Jani. For Lotterer, there is the extra incentive of winning the race for the first time with Porsche after many years of success with Audi – the two manufacturers with most wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

 

Photo: Will the Porsche 919 Hybrid start from pole position for the third year running at the 24 Hours of Le Mans? We’ll find out around midnight on Thursday.