LM Qualifying 1 & 2 Combined Times & Report

QUALIFYING SESSION 1 & 2 COMBINED TIMES & REPORT

Photo Courtesy:ACO Le Mans, France The second part of the evening sessions at Le Mans is often when times tumble. Getting started at 10pm, the cars perform better because of the lower temperatures, while for the first 30 minutes or so, enough light remains for the drivers to get the hammer down. The teams put on qualifying rubber, strap in their hot-shot driver and go for it.

Except that this year, it hasn't happened. Some cars have certainly improved over the times they set earlier this evening, but pole has dropped by only 0.130s. This might partly be due to the distinctly warm and humid conditions, but also it might be due to the advantage currently enjoyed by the works Audi R8 squad; their three cars remain at the top of the times. The order has been shuffled a little - the Abt/Alboreto/Capello car rose to the top early in the session, putting in a 3:37.523.

However, things then went wrong; as Abt pulled away from the pit after what appeared to be a routine stop, the car ran roughly and was smoking. A hundred yards later, as Abt tried to get up to racing speed, a huge cloud of oil smoke erupted from the back of the car. Abt quickly pulled over, but his session was over. The Audi had also laid a thick streak of oil up the pit-lane exit.

Second quickest is the Biela/Kristensen/Pirro car, which improved by almost 0.3s. Strangely, this improvement came at 11:50pm, when the track was in full darkness - clearly not something to deter Frank Biela. Third was the Aiello/McNish/Ortelli car, which didn't improve at all.

David Brabham came closest to breaking up the Audi dominance; at the wheel of the Panoz Spyder he's sharing with Jan Magnussen and Mario Andretti, he closed to 1.6s away from pole, set in the first half-hour of the two-hour stint. The team had a little work to do - when Andretti took the car out, he ran across the gravel at the Ford chicane, and came back to have the vents cleaned out.

The next two cars both made big improvements; the Panoz Spyder of Katoh/O'Connell/Raphanel lopped 3.3s off their earlier time to go fifth, while Schiattarella/de Radigues/Naspetti climbed a couple of places, 3.4s quicker.

The factory Cadillac cars continued to struggle; while the Lagorce/Leitzinger/Wallace Cadillac LMP car improved its time by 2.2s, this was done by Wallace, on qualifying tyres - and Audi hasn't tried qualifiers yet. The team are still trying to sort out the aerodynamics, and are also working on the tyres - they admit they aren't where they need to be, and are disappointed that some of the things that worked in testing at Monza aren't working here.

In the GTS class, the Beretta/Wendlinger/Dupuy Chrysler Viper rose to the top of the times, improving by 2.3s from the earlier session and leapfrogging over the Chevrolet Corvette C5-R of Fellows/Kneifel/Bell. But, as with the LMP cars, the teams have mostly been concentrating on ensuring that all the drivers have done the necessary laps, both during daylight and at night, and ensuring that everything works.

So it seems that tomorrow should see the times start to come down significantly. At the moment, pole is still almost 8s away from last year's mark - although that time was set by Martin Brundle, one of the acknowledged qualifying experts around the Mulsanne circuit. It was also set in a Toyota GT-One, as part of the huge no-expense-spared assault on the 24 Hours. But expect to see the pole time significantly closer to the 3:30 mark.

Regards,
Martin Buck, Jon Baker, Adam Fox & Jacquie Groom


Pos # Class   Car                                 Drivers                      Time

1   7 LMP     Audi           Michele Alboreto/ Christian Abt /Rinaldo Capello 3:37.523
2   8 LMP     Audi           Frank Biela /Emanuele Pirro /Tom Kristensen      3:37.595
3   9 LMP     Audi           Allan McNish /Stephane Ortelli/Laurent Aiello    3:37.653
4  11 LMP     Panoz          David Brabham /Jan Magnussen /Mario Andretti     3:39.156
5  12 LMP     Panoz          Johnny O’Connell/Hiroki Katoh/P.H. Raphanel      3:41.359
6  21 LMP     Lola-Judd      M. Schiattarella/Didier De Radigues/E. Naspetti  3:42.188
7  20 LMP     Lola-Ford      Jan Lammers /Tom Coronel /Peter Kox              3:43.584
8  24 LMP     Reynard-Judd   Stefan Johansson /Jim Matthews /Guy Smith        3:44.012
9  23 LMP     Panoz          Masahiko Kageyama/Masami Kageyama /Toshio Suzuki 3:44.599
10 22 LMP     Panoz          Masahiko Kondo /Keiichi Tsuchiya /Akira Iida     3:44.627
11  1 LMP     Cadillac       Franck Lagorce /Butch Letizinger/Andy Wallace    3:44.854
12  5 LMP     Reynard-Mopar  Yannick Dalmas/Nicolas Minassian/ J.-P. Belloc   3:45.720
13 16 LMP     Courage        O. Grouillard/Stephane Bourdais/Emmanuel Clerico 3:45.771
14 17 LMP     Courage-Judd   Philippe Gache /Gary Formato /Didier Cottaz      3:46.242
15  4 LMP     Cadillac       Marc Goosens /Christophe Tinseau/Kristian Kolby  3:47.056
16  3 LMP     Cadillac       Eric Bernard / Emmanuel Collard/ Franck Montagny 3:47.740
17  2 LMP     Cadillac       Wayne Taylor / Max Angelelli / Eric v.d. Poele   3:47.754
18 33 LMP 675 Reynard-VW     Ralf Kelleners /David Terrien /J.-D. Deletraz    3:48.006
19 10 LMP     Panoz          John Nielsen / Mauro Baldi /Klaus Graf           3:51.075
20 34 LMP 675 Reynard-VW     Jerome Policand /J.-C. Bouillion/Jordi Gene      3:51.805
21  6 LMP     Reynard-Mopar  Didier Theys / Jeffrey v. Hooydonk/Didier Andre  3:52.522
22 15 LMP     BMW            Thomas Bscher /Geoff Lees /Jean-Marc Gounon      3:53.117
23 35 LMP 675 WR-Peugeot     Stephane Daoudi /Xavier Pompidou /J.-B. Bouvet   3:55.557
24 51 GTS     Chrysler Viper Dominique Dupuy /Karl Wendlinger/Olivier Beretta 3:56.327
25 63 GTS     Chevy Corvette Ron Fellows /Chris Kneifel /Justin Bell          3:58.636
26 52 GTS     Chrysler Viper Marc Duez /Patrick Huisman /Tommy Archer         3:59.199
27 64 GTS     Chevy Corvette Andy Pilgrim /Kelly Collins /Franck Freon        4:00.785
28 53 GTS     Chrysler Viper Ni Amorim /Anthony Beltoise /David Donohue       4:02.837
29 56 GTS     Chrysler Viper Walter Brun / Toni Seiler /Christian Gläsel      4:04.058
30 54 GTS     Chrysler Viper Boris  Derichebourg/Guy Martinolle/J.-C. Lagniez 4:04.895
31 57 GTS     Chrysler Viper Mike Hezemans /David Hart /Hans Hugenholtz       4:05.953
32 36 LMP 675 WR-Peugeot     Sylvain Boulay /Richard Balandras /Yojiro Terada 4:07.572
33 59 GTS     Porsche GT2    Wolfgang Kaufmann/Yukihiro Hane/K. Iketani       4:09.299
34 83 GT      Porsche GT3R   Dirk Müller /Lucas Luhr /Bob Wollek              4:10.008
35 32 LMP 675 Lola-Nissan    Scott Maxwell / John Graham /Greg Wilkins        4:13.409
36 60 GTS     Porsche GT2    Tommy Kendall / C. Slater /Jürgen von Gartzen    4:13.773
37 77 GT      Porsche GT3R   Christophe Bouchut /P. Goueslard /J.-L. Chereau  4:16.389
38 30 LMP 675 Debora-BMW     Patrick Lemarie /J.-F. Yvon /Yann Goudy          4:16.538
39 76 GT      Porsche GT3R   Michel Neugarten /Tony Burgess /Max Cohen-Olivar 4:20.306
40 71 GT      Porsche GT3R   Shane Lewis /Cort Wagner /Bob Mazzuoccola        4:20.578
41 81 GT      Porsche GT3R   Gabrio Rosa /Fabio Babini /Michel Ligonnet       4:20.669
42 73 GT      Porsche GT3R   Hideo Fukuyama /Atsushi Yogo /Bruno Lambert      4:21.040
43 79 GT      Porsche GT3R   Thierry Perrier /J.-L. Ricci /Romano Ricci       4:21.382
44 82 GT      Porsche GT3R   Johnny Mowlem /David Murry /Sascha Maassen       4:22.005
45 80 GT      Porsche GT3R   Philip Verellen /Rudi Penders /Kent Dujardin     4:23.066
46 72 GT      Porsche GT3R   G. Lavaggi /T. Saldaña /Jesus D. Villarroel      4:23.849
47 78 GT      Porsche GT3R   J-L Maury-Laribiere/Bernard Chauvin /A. Zadra    4:26.446
48 75 GT      Porsche GT3R   Michael Lauer/Michael Brockman/Gunnar Jeannette  4:27.999

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Last updated June 14,2000