FIA S'cars, Magny-Cours: Pole for Dome

Hillebrand scorched around the French Grand Prix venue to set a time of 1m27.715s, just over a tenth of a second faster than Boris Dereichebourg who lines up alongside the black and white chequered Dome Judd on the front row.

It was a dramatic session from the very start with Hillebrand spinning spectacularly on his out lap. "That was very scary," he said. "I could see the wall coming towards me and I thought 'Oh my God this is going to hard to explain to Jan [Lammers],' but I got some grip on the grass and managed to get the car back on the road."

Dereichebourg was not too disappointed with a place on the front row and was confident that the Yves Courage run car would be an even greater challenge to the Dome in race trim tomorrow. "For sure we wanted the pole as this is our home race but the Dome is very quick as we all saw at Le Mans two weeks ago," Dereichebourg said.

The Pescarolo Sport run Courage C60 Peugeot starts in third position after current International Formula 3000 Championship leader Sebastien Bourdais tried to get among the top two. "We worked a lot on hard tyres and full tanks in the Free Practice this morning," he said.

British team Bob Berridge Racing were pleased with their 4th fastest time as former Champ Car ace Nicolas Minassian set the time in the ex DAMS Lola B98/10-Judd.


1. Hillebrand/Lammers Racing For Holland Dome-Judd 1m27.715s
2. Cottaz/Dereichebourg Courage Competition C60-Judd 1m27.842s
3. Bourdais/Boullion Pescarolo Courage C60-Peugeot 1m28.354s
4. Minassian/Berridge BBR Lola B98/10-Judd 1m29.426s
5. Sospiri/Baldi R&M 01-Judd 1m29.636s
6. Bruni/Battaglin Durango GMS-Judd 1m30.818s