Porsche grabs provisional LM24 poleposted in LMANS16 | 06 | 2016

AUDI RECEIVED CONFIRMATION it will face a tough battle to wrestle back domination in this weekend’s Le Mans 24-Hours when Porsche locked-out the top two places in provisional qualifying.

Swiss driver Neel Jani posted the fastest time in his #2Porsche 919 Hybrid, lapping the 8.45-mile La Sarthe circuit, early in the session as the sun was going down, in 3m19.733s. Significantly, the car could have gone quicker than the best time it posted, had it not been hampered by traffic from the Porsche Curves to the Ford Chicane.

Despite that, it still finished the session 0.470s faster the its #1 sister car (pictured) piloted by German Timo Bernhard.

And with Toyota’s filling the provisional second row with its TS050s — the #6 car of French driver Stephane Sarrazin finishing just 0.534s ahead of the #5 car of Brit Anthony Davidson — Audi could only manage fifth and sixth at the ed of the two-hour session.

Unusually, Audi suffered a strange first qualifying. Unlike main rivals Porsche and Toyota, it opted not to send the #7 Audi R18 out early in the session. Meanwhile, the #8 car sat motionless in the garage until almost the end of the first hour while repairs were carried out after it suffered a front drivetrain problem in free practice.

Such was the lateness in getting the #8 car on to the track that Audi was then forced to concentrate on ensuring Oliver Jarvis, Lucas di Grassi and Loic Duval completed their mandatory laps at night to qualify for the race.

But despite the out-of-character glitches, the #8 car finished fifth-fastest, albeit almost three-seconds off the provisional pole time, but 0.314s ahead of the #7 Audi.

In LMP2, Airdrie’s Florida-based Ryan Dalziel’s #31 Extreme Speed Motorsport Ligier-Nissan finished the session sixth-fastest, with a lap of 3:39.366s, 2.761s off the provisional pole time of Will Steven’s G-Drive Oreca-Nissan.

On his Le Mans debut, Olympian Chris Hoy and his Algarve Pro Racing adopted a relatively conservative approach to qualifying, ensuring the 40-year-old from Edinburgh — and his team-mates, Renault-Nissan Alliance athlete Andrea Pizzitola and British racer Mike Munemann — complete their statutory night laps. They finished the session 21st of the 23 LMP2 cars, 7.580s off the class provisional pole.

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In the highly-competitive GTE Pro class, Ford filled four of the top five places. The #68 Ford GT of German Dirk Muller topped the timesheet after a last-gasp 3m51.185s knocked the #69 car of England’s Richard Westbrook into second place, 0.312s back.

The #67 car of Marino Franchitti heads into Thursday evening’s two final two-hour qualifying sessions fourth-fastest, just 0.405s off class pole, and 0.448s ahead of the #66 Ford.

Kirkcaldy’s Jonny Adam’s #97 Aston Martin ended the session 11th-fastest, 4.195s off provisional pole.

Thursday’s qualifying sessions run from 7-9pm, and 10-midnight (local time).

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Jim McGill