Practice 1: Audis way ahead

The Frank Biela/Tom Kristensen/Emanuele Pirro R8 prototype was 1.4sec quicker than its sister car, driven by Rinaldo Capello, Johnny Herbert and Christian Pescatori. That car was in turn 1.5sec up on the lead Panoz of David Brabham, Jan Magnussen and Eric van de Poele.

But the American team is confident that it can close the gap. Magnussen said: "We are still able to squeeze a reasonable time out of the car but we still have a bit of work to do to improve the car. The guys were set to try a few more changes in the afternoon but we had a half-shaft failure. The bumps give the car a really hard time at this circuit and that is probably what caused the problem.

"We were going to change the rear end for tomorrow's qualifying anyway, but it was unfortunate because we lost a little track time."

The second Panoz was eighth fastest, behind the two Cadillacs, the Champion Audi and the Riley & Scott of Jim Matthews, Guy Smith and Marc Goossens.

Frank Biela/Tom Kristensen/Emanuele Pirro Audi 1m49.001s
Rinaldo Capello/Johnny Herbert/ Christian Pescatori Audi 1m50.486s
David Brabham/Jan Magnussen/Eric van de Poele Panoz 1m51.583s
Eric Bernard/Emmanuel Collard/JJ Lehto Cadillac 1m51.765s
Andy Wallace/Jan Lammers/Stefan Johansson Audi 1m51.943s
Wayne Taylor/Max Angelelli/Christophe Tinseau Cadillac 1m52.621s
Jim Matthews/Guy Smith/Marc Goossens Riley & Scott 1m52.640s
Bryan Herta/David Donohue/Bill Auberlen Panoz 1m52.826s