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Porsche Tops Le Mans Qualifying

Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb on pole for Porsche in the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans. [Photo by Porsche Motorsport]

Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb on pole for Porsche in the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans. [Photo by Porsche Motorsport]

By Jack Webster & Eddie LePine

The field of 60 cars is now set for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which begins tomorrow afternoon and concludes on Sunday. Qualifying was held in difficult conditions, and it actually rained hard during the second and third sessions, so the field was pretty much set after the first qualifying session on Wednesday.

Up front, it will be Porsche leading the field, as Porsche 919 Hybrids took the first two qualifying positions. The #2 car of Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb was quickest, with Jani setting the fast time of 3:19.733. The second Porsche, piloted by Timo Bernard was about a half a second back. Bernard will share the car with Brendon Hartley and Mark Webber.

Following the Porsches were the two Toyota TS050 Hybrids, and bringing up the rear in the LMP1 Hybrid category were the two factory Audi R18 entries, some 3+ seconds off the pace of the Porsches. It wasn’t a great showing for the Audi squad, but as Dr. Ullrich said, “The weather conditions on both qualifying days were really extreme this year.” Regardless, Audi has some ground to make up in the race.

Perhaps we should not put too much emphasis on qualifying this year, due to weather conditions, but it should not be discounted that Porsche seems to once again have the cars to beat.

As Romain Dumas said: “The target in Le Mans, obviously, is the race and not getting pole position. But, of course, it is always better to start in the front…”

Lucas di Grassi, pilot of the #8 Audi R18 said, “We have a car that’s basically well prepared for 24 hours of racing. We have a strong team backing us, the car has developed well during the course of our tests and we’re in contention. Now we still need the necessary racing fortune.” Translation: we are going to need some good luck, while Toyota and Porsche have bad luck.

As happens more often than not at Le Mans, rain is forecast for the race on Saturday, with less of a chance of showers when the event concludes on Sunday.

This race will be the survival of the fittest, and it would be difficult to predict an overall winner from the Porsche, Toyota or Audi entries. Who knows, with all the rain forecast could we perhaps see trouble for all the factory Hybrid cars and a real dark horse take the overall win, like the superb Rebellion R-One piloted by our favorites Nicolas Prost, Nick Heidfeld and Nelson Piquet? I wouldn’t bet against them.

In LM GTE Pro, it was almost a Ford sweep of the top 4 positions in class, with a Ferrari sandwiched in the 3rd spot. The Corvettes and Aston Martins were really off the pace, so much so that the ACO has made a BoP (balance of performance) adjustment after qualifying to try and slow down the Fords and Ferraris and speed up the Corvettes and Aston Martins. We will see how the race goes, but don’t count out Corvette Racing. They always seem to find a way to get to the top of the charts by the end of 24 hours of racing.

Finally, good luck to Johnny O’Connell, who is starting 52nd overall in the Team AAI Corvette C7-Z06 in the LM GTE Am class. It has been a few years since Johnny has raced at Le Mans, but never count him out. We are sure he will move that Vette up through the field pretty quickly. It would be hard to find anyone currently racing with more laps around Le Mans than Johnny.

Most of this year’s race is being televised on Fox Sports 1 & 2, so check your local listings for times. Also, check out the excellent app from Le Mans, which features live timing and scoring and live video feeds. Full details of the TV coverage schedule can be seen on IMSA.com.

This may be one of the most thrilling Le Mans races in recent history, and look for a lot of surprises. We will certainly be glued to our TVs and computers for the duration.

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