Photo : D.R. - Toyota Racing

With a lap of 1:27.499, the Japanese driver Kazuki Nakajima put the Toyota n°7 on pole position for the 6 Hours of Fuji, 7th round of the FIA World Endurance Championship.

Kazuki Nakajima, driver of Toyota n°7 : “I am really happy to get this pole position at Fuji Speedway; it means a lot to me and the team. It was cool to see the reaction of everyone in the garage at the end of the session because we had big support and also big expectations as this is our home country, our home track. We saw this morning that the car was quick enough to fight for pole position and, even though I had a bit of traffic at the start of qualifying, I managed to get a clean lap. It is a good achievement but it is still Saturday; the race means a lot more than qualifying. It will be a tricky race, particularly because it is difficult to cope with traffic in the last sector. So we will have to be careful and make no mistakes. Our aim is to win the race; we will push hard.”

Yoshiaki Kinoshita, President of Toyota Racing : “This is a fantastic result; we are so happy to be on pole position for our home race. Our TOYOTA HYBRID System - Racing was born very close to Fuji Speedway so we are delighted to deliver this result in front of our colleagues from Higashi-Fuji Technical Centre and under the shadow of beautiful Mount Fuji. We are all happy to see Kazuki back in the team and he did an incredible job; it was a really quick lap and he thoroughly deserves this pole position. I am very proud we could deliver such a strong result but we must remember this is only qualifying; our main target is to win the race tomorrow. We have made the best possible start and now we have to complete the job.”

Results of qualifying (pdf)

The race will start tomorrow (Sunday) morning at 3am UK time. It can be followed live on lemans-tv.com.

Julien Hergault

Photo : OYAMA-CHO ( SHINOZUKA, JAPAN), 6 HOURS OF FUJI, QUALIFYING, 13 OCT 2012. Kazuki Nakajima.