LeMans: Peugeot set to blow Audi’s doors off

No. 8 Peugeot of Sarrazin

It's only Wednesday, and today was only Day 1, but rest assured, the only team that will beat Peugeot in this year's 24 Hours of LeMans is Peugeot itself.

Peugeot set such a quick pace in the first qualifying session for this weekend's LeMans 24 Hours, the Audis appeared to be standing still.

Stephane Sarrazin, in the No.8 car, lapped eight seconds quicker than last year's pole time with a best of 3:18.513. Teammate Franck Montagny put the No.9 car just one tenth of a second behind, and Nicolas Minassian completed a lockout of the top three.

Seven-time winner Tom Kristensen set the quickest Audi time in the No.2 R10 TDi, but his lap was nearly six seconds off the pace of the lead Peugeots in the top LMP1 class.

In LMP2, Porsche works driver Sascha Maassen was third in Team Essex’s Porsche RS Spyder at 3:36.853, 1.5 seconds behind the leading Barazi Epsilon Zytek. Maassen is Long’s teammate at Penske in the American Le Mans Series.

Corvette Racing’s two factory Corvette C6.Rs sat second and third in GT1. Oliver Gavin was the quickest Corvette driver at 3:51.461 (nearly a half-second behind the class-leading Labre Saleen S7R of Christophe Bouchut). Next was Jan Magnussen in the sister Corvette at 3:52.361 with Aston Martin Racing’s David Brabham a further half-second back.

In GT2 American Porsche factory driver Patrick Long went quickest at 4:00.793 in the IMSA Performance Porsche 911 GT3 RSR that won last year’s race. Long, who drives a Porsche RS Spyder for Penske Racing in the States, was just 0.291 seconds ahead of the Flying Lizard Motorsports Porsche of Jörg Bergmeister, who is driving with Johannes van Overbeek and Seth Neiman. Flying Lizard leads the GT2 championship in the American Le Mans Series and is one of the favorites at Le Mans after winning at Sebring.

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