Audi Sweeps Front Row in Le Mans Qualifying

For a race in which pole position means practically nothing Thursday's qualifying sessions brought a great show for the fans. The #2 Audi R18 piloted by Benoît Tréluyer set the quickest time of 3 minutes and 25.738 seconds around the 8.469 mile long Circuit de la Sarthe. The #1 Audi of Romain Dumas was only 0.061 of a second behind to secure an all Audi front row. The quickest Peugeot was the #9 which was just 0.272 of a second behind pole position. In fact in one of the closest qualifying rounds in recent years the top six competitors were all separated by under six tenth of a second. This year the brand new Audi R18 and the equally brand new Peugeot 908 are running as close together as the two rivals ever have setting up an extremely competitive race tomorrow. With the ACO mandated slow refilling for the diesel cars fuel economy will likely play an important role along with running a clean race with no driver errors or mechanical problems.

First in the P2 category was the #26 Signatech Nissan with a time of 3 minutes and 41.458 seconds while the #55 BMW Motorsport M3 GT took the top spot in the GT Pro category with a time of 3:57.592. The #61 AF Corse F430 was the quickest in the GTE AM category with a time of 4:01.282.

The 79th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans starts at 3 PM local time or 9 AM Easter/6 AM Pacific. Stay tuned here for an hourly blog updates. Catch the race on Speed and on the Speed online stream here. Listen to the entire race with Radio Le Mans and stay up to date with live timing and scoring. Follow the race for the lead even closer with special access directly from Audi
and Peugeot.