Le Mans – Qualification Results

aston-lmp-1Today saw the qualifications for the 77th 24 Hour of Le Mans race to be held this weekend and the results were a little suprising to say the least. Today’s sessions were run while off track action between Peugeot and Audi came to a close for now.

During the day, the Peugeot piloted by Frank Montagny sat on the top spot until the very last lap of the session. Alan McNish had bee working on what appeared to be a race setup as he ran long stints throughout the most of the session. As the first of two sessions came to an end, McNish stopped and had fresh tires put on the car. He was then able to go out and set a lap that was .2 seconds quicker than his original fastest putting him on provisional pole with a time of 3m23.650s.

The night shift arrived quickly and the teams were at it again. Stephane Sarrazin was piloting the top Peugot this time and had two back to back laps that were messed up because of slower traffic. After being forced to a new set of tires, Sarrazin set a blistering lap that was a whole .7 seconds quicker than McNish’s lap from Q1. The lap ended up being 3m22.888s, an put them solidly on pole position. The trio of Capello/Kristensen/McNish will start in the number two spot.

While we here in the states have had to suffer through Acura dominating the LMP2 class, it was a breath of fresh air to see the Porsches on track and running well. The LMP2 Porsche Spyder piloted by Casper Elgaard qualified top honors by a mere .1 seconds over the Team Goh Porsche.

GT1 class had the same suspects as always on the top of the grid with the Corvette C6R with Magnussen/O’Connell/Garcia taking pole position and the second C6R also starting on the front row.

Jorg Bergmeister and his 911 were also able secure pole position for the highly competitive GT2 class.

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