Neel Jani and Romain Dumas claimed a third pole position of the 2014 World Endurance Championship for Porsche at Bahrain.

Jani and Dumas followed up on their pole two weeks ago in Shanghai aboard the #14 Porsche 919 Hybrid by pipping the Toyota of Anthony Davidson and Sebastien Buemi.

The Porsche drivers’ four-lap average of 1m43.145s put them 0.265s up on the championship leading duo’s Toyota TS040 HYBRID.

Jani, who set the fastest lap of the session with a 1m41.987s, said: “I was a little bit surprised myself to see a 1m41s, but the car felt really good.

“We have been improving the car session to session and everything came together, the braking and the handling.”

The #20 qualified by Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley ended up third, more than a second behind their team-mates on the averages.

Fourth went to the second Toyota shared by Alex Wurz and Mike Conway, while the only Audi R18 e-tron quattro was fifth in the hands of Andre Lotterer and Marcel Fassler with an average 2.4s away from the pole.

The #1 Audi was undergoing a rebuild around a new monocoque after chassis damage was diagnosed following yesterday evening’s night practice session.

G-Drive duo Roman Rusinov and Olivier Pla took LMP2 honours in their Ligier-Nissan JSP2 by seven tenths from the SMP Racing ORECA-Nissan 03R shared by Nicolas Minassian and Maurizio Mediani.

Stefan Mucke and Darren Turner claimed qualifying honours in GTE Pro aboard the lead Aston Martin Vantage GTE.

Their four-lap average eclipsed that of AF Corse Ferrari drivers Gianmaria Bruni, who ended up with the fastest lap of the session, and Toni Vilander by 0.270s.

The Ferrari drivers’ nearest challenger in the GT title race, Frederic Makowiecki, ended up only eighth, behind the top two in GTE Am, aboard the factory Manthey Porsche 911 RSR he shares with Patrick Pilet.

Aston Martin Racing was one-two in GTE Am, Nicki Thiim and Kristian Poulsen beating Pedro Lamy and Christoffer Nygaard by just over a tenth.