Sep 13, 2008
The two Audi R10 TDI cars of Audi Sport Team Joest will start to the finale of the European Le Mans Series at Silverstone (Great Britain) from the second row.
Straight at the start of the 20-minute qualifying session Allan McNish set a time of 1m 31.020s (203.336 kph), which remained unrivalled for a long time. Just shortly before the end of the session the Audi driver was bumped to third place by the two Peugeot 908s to third on the grid. Alexandre Prémat in the "sister car" set the fourth-best time.
The qualifying took place on a dry track after it had been raining in the second free practice on Friday afternoon and the third free practice on Saturday morning had been held in wet conditions as well. As at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June, the changing conditions suited the Audi R10 TDI cars particularly well. On Friday afternoon Allan McNish was the quickest, on Saturday morning Alexandre Prémat. The two set the first two best times for Audi since the brand entered the Le Mans Series with a manufacturer’s commitment.
Since there will be no warm-up at Silverstone on Sunday, Allan McNish used the last few minutes of qualifying for a few laps with full tanks to gather important information for the race that will start at 11:20 a.m. (local time), running over a distance of 1,000 kilometres and a maximum of six hours. Eurosport will broadcast the starting phase live from 12:15 p.m. to 12:45 p.m. (German time) and air highlights of the race from 10 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
In the overall standings, Alexandre Prémat and Mike Rockenfeller are ranking two points behind Peugeot drivers Marc Gené and Nicolas Minassian, thus still having sound chances for the title.
The starting grid at Silverstone
1 Lamy/Sarrazin (Peugeot) 1m 30.359s
2 Gené/Minassian (Peugeot) 1m 30.370s
3 Capello/McNish (Audi R10 TDI) 1m 31.020s
4 Prémat/Rockenfeller (Audi R10 TDI) 1m 32.122s
5 Mücke/Charouz (Lola-Aston Martin) 1m 33.229s
6 Panis/Lapierre (Courage-Oreca-Judd) 1m 33.324s
7 Nakano/Valles (Epsilon-Euskadi-Judd) 1m 34.173s
8 van Merksteijn/Verstappen (Porsche) 1m 34.212s
9 Dumas/Boullion (Pescarolo-Judd) 1m 34.878s
10 Simpson/Lewis (Creation-Aim) 1m 35.103s
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