First qualifying session - Wednesday June 14th 2000.

19:00hrs-21:00hrs
By: Jock Simpson

The weather is glorious .. the sun is shining out of a cloudless sky and it is hot !. At the start of the session the temperature was around 25C. A classic Le Mans evening.

No dramas to report at this early stage. However it certainly seems that Audi are taking this LMP 900 category a bit seriously and they want to win this year outright. They have three Audi R8's here currently running 1st #9, 2nd#7, 3rd #8. They swept to front three spots as soon as qualifying began. McNish put in the time that claimed #9 pole position at the end of this session. Almost immediately #8 was in the gravel! No damage and they rejoined, not sure who was at the helm but apparently the track was very dusty and messy. Next up is the remarkably noisy Panoz Spyder #11, four seconds behind the third place Audi. All eyes are on the Northstar Cadillacs .. yes Cadillacs .. at Le Mans ? The leading one is #4 and it is currently 10th, team mate #1 is just behind them. Just for the record the chassis is by Riley & Scott and the engine is a V8 Northstar by Cadillac themselves.

The leading LMP 675 car is the number 34 Reynard ROC VW. Lying 16th its nearest rival is the #34 car which is languishing 22nd

Everybody rather assumed that the LMGTS category would hold no surprises at all, the two Oreca Viper GTS-Rs (#51& #52) would be well ahead and nobody would get near them. However nobody told the #63 Corvette C5 who sneaked into the lead of the class at about 21:00 hrs.

LMGT is led by the #83 Dick Barbour Racing Porsche GT3-R. This is going remarkably quickly and is rumoured to be the quickest Porsche GT3-R around, it is lying 32st .. the next LMGT is the Labre Porsche at 35th !

Towards the end of the session #3 (Cadillac) and #10 (Panoz) clashed at the Ford Chicane ... #3 came off worse but still carried on and #10 limped into the pits and came out again after a check up.