8 Thrills And Spills From Le Mans Before The Race Has Even Started

Having topped free practice, Porsche also dominated qualifying for this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours. The No.18 919 Hybrid of Neel Jani, Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb will start from pole position after setting a lap record. It was a Porsche one-two-three, with the Audi and Toyota LMP1 cars following up behind.

2. A close run thing

In LMP2, Richard Bradley, Matthew Howson and Nicolas Lapierre were quickest in qualifying with the No. 47 KCMG Oreca 05 Nissan, and actually lapped faster than the slowest Nissan LMP1 machine.

In GTE Pro, the top two were separated by just 0.097 seconds, with the No.99 Aston Martin of Richie Stanaway, Alex MacDowall and Fernando Rees fastest. In GTE Am, Mathias Lauda, Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana were quickest in the No.99 Aston Martin.

How awesome do these sparks look from the first Le Mans qualifying session?

Racing at night has always been one of motorsport’s greatest spectacles and Le Mans is certainly no different. Wow.

This monumental shunt caused by mechanical failure during second qualifying on Thursday has taken the No.63 Corvette out of the race before it even started. Driver Jan Magnussen (father of McLaren F1 reserve Kevin), was fortunately okay.

Mark Patterson brought out the red flag in practice after crashing his Murphy Prototype car at the Porsche Curves, giving his team one hell of a job to get it ready for the race.

Night time racing brings with it a whole new set of challenges for the drivers. Visibility is naturally an issue, particularly on the unlit sections of track. That was evident when things got very, very close for the No.18 Porsche during night time qualifying.

The No.67 Team AAI Porsche went up in flames along the Mulsanne Straight during qualifying three. Insert joke about a Porsche on fire here…

8. In the wall

The Circuit de la Sarthe barriers got plenty of use in practice and qualifying due to several crashes, including this one for Dominik Kraihamer and his Rebellion machine.

Plenty of drivers found themselves in the gravel trap or facing the wrong way, too, proving once again that the Circuit de la Sarthe is tough to master.

9. Great sense of humour

Finally, away from the on track action, can we just mention the slide that Nissan has at its hospitality area? If only F1 teams introduced some of those, it would make the paddock much more fun.