|
Sarrazin undefeated as Peugeot celebrate |
Stephane Sarrazin once again emerged as the man to beat on the second day of qualifying for the Le Mans 24 Hours, but it proved to be his stunning lap-time from the opening session on Wednesday that was good enough to secure pole position for the 76th edition of the famous endurance event.
Sarrazin posted a time of 3m 20.566s during the first session of the day to secure the fastest Thursday lap, but it the time he set early on Wednesday that remained untouchable and ensured the 908 HDi took pole for the second year in a row on home soil.
The sister #7 car was second quickest on the day, but remained third overall after also failing to improve its lap-time with the #9 car splitting them on the grid – despite its accident in Thursday's opening session after Ricardo Zonta went off exiting the Porsche curves after contact from another car.
Audi was at least able to get amongst the Peugeot's on the day, with Allan McNish producing the best time for the #2 R10 TDi during Thursday's opening session. Third fastest on the day, the lap secured fourth place for the first of the Audi's overall, just ahead of the car of 'young guns' Alex Premat, Lucas Luhr and Mike Rockenfeller, which was amongst the cars not to improve its quickest time on the second day of qualifying.
Arguably one of the biggest stories of the second day of qualifying came with the car that will line up sixth on the grid however, after the Charouz Racing Systems Lola Aston Martin showed that a petrol-powered LMP1 car is capable of taking the challenge to the diesel machines.
Having suffered problems on Wednesday that left the car down in 15th place overnight, the closed coupe machine climbed up the order into the top ten in the third qualifying session, before Stefan Mucke really put the pressure on in the final session to try and secure petrol bragging rights. A lap of 3m 27.264s early in the session was then followed by one some two seconds quicker to put the Lola into an impressive sixth place overall – and ahead of the #1 Audi. Despite Marco Werner going out late on to put in the car's quickest time, it feel just a tenth of a second short of ensuring a diesel lock-out of the top six places and gave the Czech Charouz squad reason to cheer ahead of the race.
Mucke's time was also comfortably quicker than the next fastest petrol car, which proved to be the impressive Dome S102 and its all-Japanese driver line-up. Prior to Mucke's quickest lap it looked like the Dome could secure petrol honours but the team was unable to respond when the car stopped on the track during the final session. Despite that, the Dome starts from eighth place ahead of the repaired #16 Pescarolo and the #5 ORECA-Matmut entry, which managed to return to the track for the final two hours after Laurent Groppi crashed into the barriers early in Thursday's opening session.
The second Pescarolo will start from eleventh ahead of the Charouz-entered Cytosport Lola-Judd and the second of the ORECA-Matmut entries. Elsewhere in LMP1, the Epsilon Euskadi entry of Stefan Johansson, Jean-Marc Gounon and Shinji Nakano will start from a highly impressive 15th place – despite the fact the car wasn't even entered into the race until late on Tuesday evening – two places ahead of the sister car, which is followed by the Rollcentre Racing Pescarolo.
The Creation AIM – provided it can be fully repaired after Stuart Hall's accident – lines up 21st ahead of the Terramos Courage and the Chamberlain Synergy Lola, while the Saulnier Racing Pescarolo, the Autocon Creation and the Tokai University YGK Courage complete the LMP1 field.
