Minassian fastest in Friday practice

The Frenchman lapped in 1:43.978 to beat the No.1 Audi of Allan McNish, Dindo Capello and Tom Kristensen by 0.259 seconds.

Minassian's co-driver Stephane Sarrazin had been fastest in yesterday's qualifying session, only to lose pole to McNish when the session was declared void because the red flag for Ben Devlin's accident in the BK Lola-Mazda meant there was less than the minimum permitted amount of green flag running.

The grid was therefore formed on practice times, and McNish's 1:43.195 from the Thursday morning session remains the quickest time of the week - although the Peugeot has been fastest in three of the five official practice sessions, plus the abbreviated qualifying.

The Penske Porsches were third and fourth quickest today, with IndyCar Series driver Ryan Briscoe setting the fastest LMP2 time, six tenths of a second behind Minassian.

The session saw little incident, although Marco Werner spun the second works Audi on cold tyres early on. The No.2 car ultimately went fifth fastest.

The BK team missed the session - Devlin's accident having damaged the Lola's tub - but work continues to get the car ready for the race start tomorrow morning.

Chevrolet's Oliver Gavin and Tafel Ferrari's Dirk Muller led the way in the GT classes.

Today's session was the last chance for significant running prior to the race start, with only the short Saturday morning warm-up session remaining before the 56th Sebring 12 Hours commences at 10.05am local time tomorrow.