Rain which varied from fairly light to torrential dogged the second two-hour stint on Wednesday; despite this, the top LMP1 cars managed to improve their times. After the first two-hour stint was brought to a premature end, the second stint got under way on time at 10pm. The cloud cover made the circuit prematurely dark; the track was still very wet, the rooster-tails of spray showing up in the headlights of following cars, although the rain had slowed, and was much lighter than earlier.
Franck Montagny took advantage of the minor improvement in conditions to do some quick laps in the No.17 Pescarolo Judd, first splitting the Audis and then going even quicker to claim provisional pole with a lap of 4:19.143; the degree of difficulty caused by the conditions can be judged by the fact that this time is almost 45 seconds slower than last year’s pole time, set in the dry.
But then, 20 minutes after the green flag, the rain started to come down heavier, and times got even slower. The teams switched their focus onto getting all of their drivers night-qualified – the requirement is that a driver completes at least three laps during the two 2-hour stints between 10pm and midnight on Wednesday and Thursday.
Not that the rain bothered Montagny; at 10:37pm he put in a remarkable lap, his 4:17.295 almost two seconds faster than his previous best. It took Audi only two minutes to respond, McNish putting in a 4:17.189 in the No.7 Audi. On the very next lap Montagny outdid him with a 4:14.447, an astonishing improvement of almost three seconds on his previous best.
By the end of the session the No.8 Audi had improved to 4:17.676 but had dropped to fourth, just under half a second slower than the sister No.7 car; at almost the same time Rinaldo Capello spun the No.7 car into the barriers at the Tertre Rouge esses, being forced to abandon the car. With half an hour remaining, despite the rain continuing to fall, Emmanuel Collard put in a series of flying laps in the No.16 Pescarolo; first he jumped over the two Audis to claim second with a 4:15.565, then went fastest of all with a 4:13.832.
As the LMP1 started to bring their cars down the leading GT1 cars, the two Aston Martin DBR9 entries, were pushed out of the top ten; with no improvement on their earlier times, the No.007 car of Enge/Piccini/Turner staying ahead of the No.009 of Lamy/Ortelli/Sarrazin. The two works Corvettes went out, but made no real attempt to turn fast laps, so third in class went to the No.67 Convers Menx Ferrari 550 Maranello.
The 4:25.398 lap set by the No.20 Pierre Bruneau Pilbeam Judd in the first ten minutes of the evening proved to be the quickest time in LMP2; their nearest challenger was the No.32 Barazi Epsilon Courage AER, just under 2s slower.
The final two hours of the evening also saw no changes in the GT2 positions, so the No.90 White Lightning Porsche 911 is on the overnight class pole improving their time to 4:39.912, ahead of the No.76 IMSA Performance Matmut Porsche 911, with third held by the No.86 Spyker Squadron C8 Spyder.
If Thursday’s practice session is dry, as is forecast, all of tonight’s times will count for nothing, despite the heroics involved in going as fast as possible in extremely tricky conditions. The sheer length of the 13.65km circuit makes it even more difficult - there can be torrential rain in some parts, no more than a light shower in others.
