Silverstone WEC opener is Porsche's 'joker' - Neel Jani

With the 2017 WEC rules limiting LMP1 manufacturers to two aerokits for the season, Porsche has chosen to use its Le Mans-angled low-downforce kit for the opener and to continue working on its high-downforce package for the races after the 24 Hours.

Toyota has gone for high-downforce trim from the outset and dominated at Silverstone so far, filling the front row in qualifying.

The best of the Porsches, the #1 car shared by Neel Jani and Nick Tandy, had a combined laptime 1.311 seconds off the pace, and still over a second behind the second-placed Toyota.

"With the low downforce package here, we always knew we were on the back foot," Jani told Autosport.

"We always knew we'd have to sacrifice Silverstone.

"But also the 1m36s Toyota did is unbelievable and we hope in the race the gap gets a bit closer.

"Most important for us is to finish, because we don't want to give away points.

"This is basically our joker race, and we don't want to give away points we don't need to.

"Hopefully those extra months of developing the high-downforce kit will give us the edge for the second half of the season, and then no one remembers Silverstone."

Despite Toyota's domination, Jani said he was satisfied with the performance of the 919 in low-downforce spec, and believes Porsche will be in a stronger position for the next round at Spa.

"It's worth noting our lap time, even though we came with low downforce, is quicker than last year's," Jani added. "We improved the car massively.

"This low-downforce package feels very good.

"I would have never imagined it would feel so good on this track, which gives me a lot of confidence for Spa and Le Mans."

Anthony Davidson, who shared the second-placed Toyota with Kazuki Nakajima in qualifying, expects Sunday's race to be a "different story", even if his team retains a performance edge.

"In terms of qualifying pace, we expected to have some margin over Porsche, maybe not quite as much as what we had in the race," Davidson said.

"Tomorrow will be a different story. We should still have an advantage in some shape or form, but you shouldn't expect to have the same advantage as in qualifying.

"If you run more downforce, you don't benefit all the time because of traffic.

"If you run lower downforce, you always enjoy better top speed.

"So we're expecting more of a fight."