Peugeot set the pace in warm-up

Pedro Lamy, Nicolas Minassian and Frank Montagny took it in turns to head the timesheets during the session. Montagny ended up quickest with a time of 3:20.332, underlining the health of the No. 9 machine after co-driver Ricardo Zonta's crash in Thursday qualifying.

Behind Lamy and Minassian, Audi's Alan McNish beat his own qualifying best to go within three seconds of the fastest time. His 3:23.319 effort meant that the No. 2 Audi finished closer to the leading Peugeot than at any other point in the build up to the event.

The fight for petrol-engined honours continued between the Dome Racing Team and the Charouz Racing Systems Lola-Aston Martin. Yuji Tachikawa reversed the qualifying positions by setting 3m33.118s to finish seventh quickest, behind the three Audis.

The Team Essex Porsche RS Spyder topped LMP2 Casper Elgaard pipping the category pole-sitting Porsche of Jeroen Bleekemolen/Jos Verstappen and Peter Van Merksteijn, which suffered a spin in Van Merksteijn's hands.

After being outpaced in qualifying, the GT1 Prodrive Aston Martin squad demonstrated their potential by leading the class. David Brabham set a 3:50.489, just 0.4 seconds ahead of the No. 64 Chevrolet Corvette.

The GT2 fight between Porsche and Ferrari continued, with just over 0.3sec covering the top four. Toni Vilander ended up fastest with a time of 4:03.024, just ahead of the leading Porsche of Horst Felbermayr Sr, Alex Davison and Wolf Henzler.

The class pole-sitting Imsa Performance Porsche failed to set a representative time after a leak forced the team to identify the problem prior to the start of the race this afternoon.