Strakka faces challenge to make grid

Leventis lost control of the car under braking for Les Combes and hit the tyre wall with the left rear of the car.

Team manager Piers Phillips admitted to AUTOSPORT that the team now faces a challenge to avoid starting the race from the pitlane. "It's gone from a good morning to a challenging one!"

"We've had a good weekend up to this point. We got through several programmes on Friday, had a great qualifying session and everything was going nicely. We don't fully understand what happened to Nick yet, but we don't think there were any other cars involved.

"The damage looked bad on the television but we won't know how much there is to do until we get the car back to the pits, so we don't know if anything went down or whether something failed on the car.

"We're trying not to start from the pitlane, but it's a long race - five hours if it stays dry - so there is plenty of time to work back up to the position we are in now if we do."

Peugeot's Pedro Lamy, driving the #3 908 HDi FAP, set the pace in the 20-minute session ahead of team-mate Anthony Davidson. Mike Rockenfeller was third quickest in the front-row starting Audi R15 TDI Plus, while Franck Montagny's third factory Peugeot, Allan McNish's Audi and Olivier Panis' ORECA Peugeot completed the top six.

Stefan Mucke's Aston Martin and Dirk Muller's BMW set the pace in GT1 and GT2 respectively.