Audi dominates Le Mans qualifying races

MANILA, Philippines -  After a shortened first day or practice for the anniversary event of the Le Mans 24 Hours, all three Audi R18 e-tron quattro cards took the top three positions in free practice and qualifying rounds in Ingolstadt, Le Mans, Western France recently.

The hybrid race cars with four rings dominated the 13.629-km track with Number 2 Audi R18 e-tron quattro driven by Loïc Duval of France showing the way followed by Tom Kristensen of Denmark and Scot Allan McNish.

Duval turned in a best time of three minutes, 22.349 seconds, beating last year’s best time by almost 1.5 seconds.

Spaniard Marc Gené, who is sharing the number ‘3’ Audi R18 e-tron quattro with Lucas di Grassi of Brazil and Oliver Jarvis of Great Britain, turned in the day’s second-fastest time (3.24.341). Last year’s winners and current World Endurance champions Marcel Fässler of Switzerland, German André Lotterer and Frenchman Benoît Tréluyer were in third.

Lotterer, on board car No. 1, posted the fastest lap time in 3.25.474.

But none of the three Audi squads was mainly focused on the chase for fast lap times Wednesday. Following the predominantly rainy pre-test on Sunday before last, Audi Sport Team Joest continued the test program that had been started then, focusing on tire tests and a perfect race set-up of the three R18 e-tron quattro cars. In addition, all drivers tried to do the mandatory laps at night. All, except for Marcel Fässler, who was stopped twice by red flags, managed this. 

Both the free practice and the first qualifying sessions were stopped early after incidents in which the guard rails of the race track were damaged – qualifying even ended as early as after 65 minutes of the originally scheduled two hours. 

“Still, we basically completed our work tonight as planned,” said Duval. “Our plan was to reel off a real qualifying lap on a dry track as well – you never know what the weather will be like tomorrow. I caught a lap without traffic. But our car isn’t perfect yet simply because the track conditions aren’t so conclusive yet..”

“It’s nice that the race week has finally begun for good,” said head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich. “The weather conditions were better today than expected so that we were able to work well. Unfortunately, there were two longer interruptions because the track had to be repaired after accidents.”