Murphy Prototypes have qualified their #48 Oreca 03R Nissan in sixth position for the 2014 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

A mere half a second separated the top six cars in LMP2 in yet another evening of mixed sessions with both red and yellow flags disrupting the running. The team’s best time set in Qualifying Practice Two by Nathanaël Berthon looked set to be beaten in the third session by Karun Chandhok, before he crashed out towards the end of the session at Indianapolis.

With largely cosmetic damage, the Murphy Prototypes team is confident that the car will be ready to take its place on the grid at 15:00h on Saturday afternoon for the 82nd running of the world’s greatest endurance race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Karun Chandhok - #48:“Well obviously it’s a disappointing end for the boys and for myself. It was a really weird accident that caught me out by surprise. I came out of Indianapolis and on the exit the car just snapped to the right. Fortunately it went quite sharply to the right and hit the barrier square on so the front crash structure seemed to absorb the impact. The car has been competitive all week and we’ve got a good team of guys to get it ready for the race so we should be in good shape.”

Nathanaël Berthon - #48:“I am very happy about what we did yesterday. We set a pretty good lap time but I think the car could have done a better lap time but we had a problem with the traffic. We were on pole at one point in the second session so I think the pace was there. I am very confident for the race because the car is very consistent. We have worked a lot on the race pace. The team have done a fantastic job, the car is very competitive and we have three strong drivers.”

Rodolfo Gonzalez - #48:“We had reasonable pace in qualifying. It was a shame about the accident but hopefully we’ve got the bad luck out of the way. This reassures us that to get a good result here its about keeping your nose clean. We have good natural pace and if we are intelligent and smart we will have a really good result.”

Greg Murphy, Team Owner, Murphy Prototypes:“Once again the car was very good during the final two qualifying sessions. The drivers all did a really good job. It was unfortunate that we ended the evening with a crash with Karun in the car but hopefully that’s all our bad luck out of the way for the weekend now and we can continue with our goal of winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans on Sunday afternoon.”