LM24: Porsche stays on top as rain hits qualifying

Porsche maintained its front row lockout for the Le Mans 24 Hours during a second qualifying session that was predominantly held in wet conditions on Thursday.

Neel Jani's 3m19.733s went unchallenged in the first 30 minutes of the evening's first two-hour session – the only part of track running that took place in the dry.

While the factory LMP1 cars all took to the track in the opening minutes to get some dry laps, none showed any interest in trying to set competitive times, with Toyota the busiest of the manufacturers but still several seconds down on its best laps from Wednesday.

Related Stories

While the track action was far less frenetic once the heavens opened – initially in the first part of the lap – the leading teams kept themselves busy with short runs, with Toyota continuing to log the most laps.

While there were no changes in the order during the session, the Audis swapped places overnight after the faster #8 R18 e-tron quattro was penalized for using too much fuel on its fastest lap on Wednesday. That moved the Lucas di Grassi/Loic Duval/Oliver Jarvis car back to sixth place, just 0.043s slower than the #7 car of Marcel Fassler/Andre Lotterer/Benoit Treluyer.

The only other change in LMP1 came courtesy of the ByKolles CLM, which logged its first qualifying laps of the event after missing yesterday's session following a big fire in free practice.

Pierre Kaffer slotted the car onto the back of the P1 field in ninth place, 14.4s off Jani's time with a 3m34.168s shortly before the rain fell.

LMP2 - LIMITED IMPROVEMENTS MADE

There was no change to the top 14 places in the LMP2 order, with G-Drive's ORECA still set to start on pole position.

The fastest time before the rain arrived was set by Ho-Pin Tung in the Baxi DC Racing Alpine, but his 3m39s effort was the best part of three seconds off the pace set by Rene Rast on Wednesday evening.

Five teams improved their times, with the Pegasus Racing Morgan finding one second to move up from 16th to 15th in the order.

Vitaly Petrov moved the #37 SMP Racing BR-01 up one place to 18th, finishing ahead fellow improvers Algarve Pro Racing and Greaves Motorsport, while the SO24! by Lombard Racing Ligier moved off of the bottom of the order to 22nd.

GTE - FORD STILL ON TOP

Ford remains on course for a provisional 1-2 on the grid on the 50th anniversary of the original GT's first Le Mans triumph.

Dirk Muller's Wednesday night benchmark of 3m51.185s remained unbeaten as none of the GTE Pro field improved its times during the brief spell of dry running at the start of the session. It means the guesting #68 and #69 GTs usually run in the IMSA SportsCar Championship retain their front-row berths on the provisional grid, ahead of the #51 AF Corse Ferrari 488.

The fastest laptime for the session itself came from the lead Ferrari in the hands of James Calado, but the Briton's 3m53.218s was a long way off the car's Wednesday-night best.

Ferrari will be buoyed by Calado's short but rapid outings when the track was wet, with the 488 fractionally faster than any of the Fords could manage after the rain fell.

Porsche, Chevrolet and Aston Martin kept their wet-weather running to a minimum, and remain several seconds off the benchmark pace following after failing to improve on a difficult opening session while it was dry.

The AF-run Clearwater Racing Ferrari 458 Italia is still on top of the GTE Am class thanks to Rob Bell's Wednesday effort.

There is no change for second either, which remains the domain of the #98 Aston Martin Racing Vantage, but the #88 Abu Dhabi-Proton Porsche has moved up to third on the grid in its class.

Originally on Autosport.com