Henri Pescarolo's dreams of taking the fight to Audi in the early laps of the 2006 Le Mans 24 Hours disappeared in a silver cloud as Allan McNish and Frank Biela asserted their dominance.

After successfully defending their front row lockout on the opening tour of the 8.45-mile Le Mans circuit McNish and Biela set about pulling away from the two French Pescarolo-Judd's at a rate of more than one second per lap with not even the early intervention of the safety car enough to peg them in.

With Emmanuel Collard choosing to pit the #16 Pescarolo just as the race returned to green flag running following the safety car intervention it was left to Frank Montagny to chase the two Audis, which were busy putting on a great show at the head of the field.

Biela passed McNish coming out of Arnage at the three-quarter hour mark only to have the Scotsman re-pass him on their in-lap before their first scheduled pitstops. While Collard's alternate pit strategy briefly allowed him to split the Audis after the pitstops, by the time 90 minutes was on the race clock McNish was holding a 20 second advantage over Biela with Collard a massive 90 seconds in arrears and Montagny a further dozen seconds back.

In LMP2 Warren Hughes kept the #39 Chamberlain Lola at the head of the field for much of the early going followed by the Rollcentre Radical and the RML MG Lola while in GT1 Oliver Gavin handed over to Olivier Beretta in the lead with only the Pedro Lamy led #009 Aston Martin in close company.

Lamy had been having a great dice with Johnny O Connell in the #63 Corvette until the American driver spun in the Porsche Curves and broke a toe link that took two laps to replace.

The GT2 order was certainly refreshing with the Scuderia Ecosse Ferrari at one point leading the Krohn/White Lightning Porsche, the factory Panoz, the #86 Spyker, the Team LNT Panoz and the Flying Lizard Porsche. With the first round of pitstops out of the way though it was the rebuilt IMSA Porsche, complete with spare and untested chassis that led in the hands of Romain Dumas with the Ferrari a close second and the Krohn/White Lightning Porsche third.