McNish car on provisional poleposted in LMANS19 | 06 | 2013
ALLAN McNISH'S AUDI (No2 picture) topped tonight's opening qualifying session for the 90th anniversary Le Mans 24-Hours. The Dumfries 41-year-old's co-driver, Frenchman Loic Duval, set the fastest time, a 3min 22.349secs (150.68mph) in their hybrid-diesel Audi R18 e-tron quattro.
“I’m delighted to be on provisional pole-position," McNish said. "Tom, Loic and I have all got a positive feeling with the car, but we still need to improve it a little for the race.
“The base speed is there and Loic proved that with the fastest time. It was good to clock up some dry running after the rain we had in the earlier practice.”
Audi locked-out the top three positions, with McNish's 'sister' cars of Oliver Jarvis (GB)/Marc Gené (SP)/Lucas di Grassi (BR), plus 2011 & ’12 Le Mans winners, Marcel Fässler (CH)/André Lotterer (D)/Benoît Tréluyer (F) clocking the second and third fastest times respectively.
Scot Paul di Resta storms to seventh in Canada
The final 55 minutes of running of the four-hour session were cancelled due to barrier damage incurred when expected LMP2 front-runner Pierre Thiriet lost control of the Oreca-Nissan at the second Mulsanne chicane.
There was bad news too for Toyoya, who are expected to be Audi's closest challenger.
The No8 Toyota-Hybrid of Sebastien Buemi ground to a halt when it lost all power at Arnage. Embarrassingly, when the car was returned to the pits on the back of a flatbed truck, it couldn't be removed without damaging the underside of the Toyota. it was eventually removed to parc ferme behind the team's garage.
Fifer Peter Dumbreck posted the third-fastest time in the GTE Pro class behind the wheel of his Aston Martin. The Kirkcaldy racer's time of 3:56.004s was just 0.346s behind his Aston team-mate Bruno Senna who took provisional pole.
Final quailing takes place tomorrow with two two-hour sessions, 7-9pm & 10-midnight (local time +1hr to UK).
Audi A3 saloon prices & specs
Keep up-to-date with all the latest news by following us on twitter.com/scotcars
Jim McGill