[Racer Duck]

The 76th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans runs from 9 a.m. ET (3 p.m. local time) Saturday, June 14 to 9 a.m. ET Sunday, June 15 from the Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans, France. Forty-four drivers will represent the American Le Mans Series, whose teams have captured seven overall victories and 22 class championships since 1999. SPEED will televise the event live, and Radio Le Mans will have flag-to-flag coverage of the race as well as practice and qualifying on June 11 and 12.

Here is the complete, official listing of the qualifying in each of the classes. (This is a PDF file, so you will need Adobe Reader or equivalent to peruse it.)

Peugeot will start the Le Mans 24 race with three cars at the front.
Courtesy of Peugeot

For the second year in a row, a stunning lap from Stéphane Sarrazin has put Team Peugeot Total on pole position for the start of the Le Mans 24 Hours. The Frenchman was the fastest driver on the track during qualifying thanks to a time of 3m 18.513s on Wednesday in the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP he shares with Pedro Lamy and Alexander Wurz. The N°8 car will consequently lead the field away when the endurance classic begins at 3pm on Saturday afternoon, ahead of the N°9 and N°7 sister cars of Franck Montagny/Ricardo Zonta/Christian Klien and Marc Gené/Nicolas Minassian/Jacques Villeneuve. The French machines completed qualifying more than three seconds quicker than their best-placed rival as the top teams spent the majority of the week's two practice sessions concentrating on fine-tuning the race set-ups of their respective machines.

One of the unique features of the Le Mans 24 Hours is the fact that teams get only two opportunities to practice round the full 13.629km circuit. One of those is the traditional preliminary test-day – a fortnight before the race – and the other is race-week itself, which includes two four-hour test sessions on the Wednesday and Thursday evenings before the big day. "Given that the test day earlier in the month was marked by heavy rain which upset most people's plans," observes Peugeot Sport Technical Director Bruno Famin, "it was important to get in as many useful laps under our belts as possible this week in order to gather data and information in several specific areas."

Best Audi pilot was yet again Allan McNish who further improved his time from the previous day with a full tank by three tenths of a second. He thus beat last year’s fastest time of an Audi R10 TDI by over three seconds. Dindo Capello, Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish will start the race on Saturday as best placed Audi team from the second row of the grid in fourth place.

Lucas Luhr, Alexandre Prémat and Mike Rockenfeller will start from position five. Frank Biela, Emanuele Pirro and Marco Werner improved their lap time from the previous night but dropped to seventh position on the grid.

Audi competes for the tenth time this year in the Le Mans 24 Hours and has won the French endurance classic already seven times – 2005, incidentally, starting from a similar position: In that year the best Audi also started from the second row. At the end of the race Audi won by two laps.

More than 250,000 spectators are expected at the weekend at Le Mans. Millions of fans will follow the "race of the year" on television. In Europe, Eurosport broadcasts live from Le Mans.

LMP1 Top 10 Qualifying

1 Lamy/Sarrazin/Wurz (Peugeot 908) 3m 18.513s
2 Montagny/Zonta/Klien (Peugeot 908) 3m 18.682s
3 Gené/Minassian/Villeneuve (Peugeot 908) 3m 20.451s
4 Capello/Kristensen/McNish (Audi R10 TDI) 3m 23.847s
5 Luhr/Prémat/Rockenfeller (Audi R10 TDI) 3m 24.287s
6 Charouz/Mücke/Enge (Lola-Aston Martin) 3m 25.158s
7 Biela/Pirro/Werner (Audi R10 TDI) 3m 25.289s
8 Ito/Tachikawa/Kataoka (Dome-Judd) 3m 26.928s
9 Collard/Boullion/Dumas (Pescarolo-Judd) 3m 28.533s
10 Ayari/Duval/Groppi (Courage-Oreca-Judd) 3m 30.490s

Corvette Racing's record at the 24 Hours of Le Mans since 2001 is as impressive as any with five GT1 victories. Jan Magnussen gave America's premier sports car team its first pole position in the world's greatest race on Thursday. Magnussen turned a lap of 3:47.688 (133.911 mph) to better his time set Wednesday in the Corvette C6.R he will share with Johnny O'Connell and Ron Fellows.

Magnussen and Patrick Long in GT2 gave the American Le Mans Series two drivers on class pole positions for the weekend's 76th running of Le Mans.

The two-day qualifying session continued the momentum the Corvette drivers established in the first half of the American Le Mans Series season. The trio in the No. 63 factory entry won the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, and Magnussen and O'Connell lead the GT1 championship with three victories in four races.

Oliver Gavin in the other works Corvette qualified third at 3:48.539 (133.400 mph); Gavin will drive with Olivier Beretta and Max Papis. They did not finish last year's race after the Corvette's driveshaft failed in the first two hours. He was less than a half-second ahead of Aston Martin Racing's David Brabham in the No. 009 Aston Martin DBR9.

Long threw down a stunning lap of 3:58.152 (128.016 mph) in the IMSA Performance Porsche 911 GT3 RSR. America's lone Porsche factory driver is going for a class repeat with Richard Lietz and Raymond Narac. Long, who drives a Porsche RS Spyder with Sascha Maassen for Penske Racing in the US, was just ahead of Wolf Henzler in the Team Felbermayr-Proton Porsche.

Henzler drives for Flying Lizard Motorsports in the American Le Mans Series and leads the driver's championship with Jörg Bergmeister. Driving with Alex Davison and Horst Felbermayr, Henzler's qualifying time was 3:59.072 (127.523 mph) in his Le Mans debut.

Speaking of Flying Lizard, the team elected to concentrate on race setup Thursday and did not improve on Bergmeister's time of 4:00.106 (126.974 mph) he set Wednesday. He will drive with Johannes van Overbeek and Seth Neiman. Risi Competizione, the other American Le Mans Series representation in the class, saw its Ferrari F430 GTs qualify sixth and 11th in GT2.

Sascha Maassen, Long's teammate at Penske, qualified second in LMP2 in Team Essex's Porsche RS Spyder. Maassen's time from Wednesday of 3:33.441 (142.836 mph) held up Thursday and ended 1.14 seconds behind Jos Verstappen in the Van Merksteijn Motorsport Porsche.

The top five positions didn't change Thursday. Peugeot's three diesel-powered Peugeot 908s were quickest with Stephane Sarrazin setting a Le Mans record with a lap of 3:18.513 (153.578 mph) on Wednesday. Allan McNish was the quickest of the nine Audi drivers with a 3:23.847 (149.559 mph) in the Audi R10 TDI that he will drive with Dindo Capello and Tom Kristensen. McNish's time was third quickest overall Thursday behind a pair of Peugeots.

The Team Cytosport/Charouz Racing System Lola-Judd of Greg Pickett, Klaus Graf and Jan Lammers finished qualifying 12th fastest overall and in LMP1 with Graf improving to at 3:31.135 (144.397 mph). Autocon Motorsports' Creation-Judd of Michael Lewis, Chris McMurry and Bryan Willman made the biggest jump of the day by nearly nine seconds. Lewis' time of 3:47.695 (133.895 mph) was the Creation's best lap.

Sources:

• ! Official website of 24 Heures du Mans 2008 and 24 Heures Moto 2008 - ACO
• Peugeot 908 HDi FAPs Monopolise Le Mans 24 Qualifying, Sweep Top Three Spots :: PaddockTalk :: F1, NASCAR, IndyCar, GP2, MotoGP, ALMS, WRC and More! If It Goes Fast...We're Talking About It!!
• Le Mans 24: Magnussen Gives Corvette First Le Mans Pole :: PaddockTalk :: F1, NASCAR, IndyCar, GP2, MotoGP, ALMS, WRC and More! If It Goes Fast...We're Talking About It!!

[DOF_power]

Those turbo-diesels are really fast. Should be interesting as there as battles in every class.

[simple simon]

ive got to be honest ... the only name i immediately recognize from the top 10 teams is Villenueve