Thu, day practice: Panoz edges Audi

The thundering V8-powered machine, which was pressed back into service halfway through the season, following the failure of its lower, leaner, allegedly quicker replacement, finished the second session nearly half a second to the good over the fastest Audi - that of title contender Rinaldo Capello and his team mate Tom Kristensen.

Capello lags behind his Joest team mate Emanuele Pirro in the drivers' standings, and the crown must go to one of these two. But for another couple of spoilers in a race scheduled for 1000 miles or 10 hours, they may look no further than the Champion-run Audi of Andy Wallace and Johnny Herbert, or the older-spec Gulf car of Stefan Johansson and Patrick Lemarie. Those two cars finished fourth and fifth respectively, with the top five cars covered by 1.25s.

Cadillac is just a little off the ultimate pace, with its pair of LMP 01s finishing sixth and seventh, ahead of the fastest of the smaller, lighter LMP 675 cars, the Reynard-Judd of Didier de Radigues.

The second Panos, driven by Klaus Graf, crashed between Turns 2 and 3 after being hit by another car and has been taken to the team's workshops close to the track.

In the GTS class, Oliver put his Saleen S7R top of the pile, ahead of Andy Pilgrim's Chevrolet Corvette C5-R. Fifth in class, but finding speed as the operation gets to grip with Road Atlanta, was Prodrive's fabulous sounding Ferrari 550 Maranello.

BMWs topped the GT class, with the Schnitzer-run cars posting the best two cars in the class.

A two-hour evening session completes Thursday's running, with a single hour of practice on Friday morning before qualifying.



1 Magnussen/Brabham, Panoz LMP1-RS, 1m12.517s
2 Capello Kristensen, Audi R8, 1m13.001s
3 Biela/Pirro, Audi R8, 1m13.320s
4, Wallace/Herbert, Audi R8, 1m13.467s
5, Johansson/Lemarie, Audi R8, 1m13.776s

8 de Radigues/Lambert/Godd, Reynard 01Q/Judd, 1m15.424s

14 Bingham/Johnson/Gavin, Saleen S7R, 1m21.111s

20 Lehto/Wendlinger/Ekblom, BMW M3 GTR, 1m23.405s