Le Mans 2017: Thursday
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Welcome to Autosport's coverage of the second day of qualifying for the 2017 Le Mans 24 Hours.
Autosport
Here is how it stands heading into the second of three qualifying sessions 
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There will be two two-hour sessions tonight that will finalise the grid. In six minutes, the first session starts, then there will be a two-hour gap before the final session. That finishes at midnight, at which point we will have the grid set for the 2017 Le Mans 24 Hours.
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LMP1
Yesterday's opening qualifying session proved to be an interesting one in LMP1. Although it was a Toyota 1-2 with Kobayashi in the #7 machine heading Nakajima in the #8 example, the key point was the pace of Porsche. At the test day earlier this month Toyota dominated. Yesterday, Bernhard was able to get within a second of provisional pole. Porsche has been working very hard since the test day making a number of improvements that are starting to pay off - and with Jani in the #1 car unable to get a clean lap in, there could be more to come today.
Autosport
Today brought news of Panoz's plan to enter the 2018 Le Mans 24 Hours with an electric car 
Autosport
And here's a driver who should be racing here, but isn't thanks to injury, complaining about Balance of Performance in GTE Pro. While it's never a surprise to see the BoP being complained about, this is slightly different to the usual complaints about how the BoP has been applied 
Autosport
Here's our video round-up of yesterday's action:
Le Mans day one qualifying highlightsby Autosport via YouTube
Le Mans day one qualifying highlightsby Autosport via YouTube
LMP1
The hotter conditions for qualifying yesterday have also proved to be a major talking point, with Porsche seeming to gain a slight advantage in them. Will that continue today, when temperatures are a touch higher?
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Green flag
And qualifying is now underway here at Le Mans
GTE PRO
We might see more concerted efforts to go for quick times tonight in the GTE class. Ryan Briscoe, one of the #69 Ganassi Ford drivers, told Autosport today that the team's weather forecast indicated that tonight's session would be slightly more favourable than last night.
LMP2
In the leading LMP2 cars we have:#28 TDS ORECA - Perrodo#31 Rebellion ORECA - Prost#25 Manor ORECA - Trummer#24 Manor ORECA - Graves#38 Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA - Laurent
LMP1
So who will be getting the first chance to improve their car's time? In the #7 Toyota will be Conway, in #8 will be Buemi and #9 Kunimoto. Over in the Porsche corner will be Tandy (#1) and Bamber (#2). And not forgetting the ByKolles, that will be started by Kraihamer.
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LMP2
The #37 Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA is out in the hands of Cheng. That car barely ran in qualifying yesterday and has had an engine change.
LMP1
This is the situation in LMP1 at the start of this session:
Yellow flag
We have a yellow flag on the final part of the Mulsanne Straight.
Crash
And we have major drama already! The #8 Toyota of Buemi has ground to a halt.
Green flag
Whatever the problem was with the Toyota, Buemi is now slowly back on the move.
GTE PRO
Frank-Steffen Walliser, Porsche's VP of Motorsport, said earlier: “In qualifying we look for peak performance but in the hot conditions we concentrate on the setup for the race to learn as much as we can. For sure if you have a shot with fresh tyres you try, but we don’t overstretch it.” When we put it to him that not all the teams seemed to be making a concerted effort to go for pole, he said, "Well, Aston Martin would like it with the lap time they did yesterday evening, they care for sure." We'll be looking at the importance of GTE quali on Autosport Plus tomorrow.
Stopwatch
Laurent takes LMP2 top spot in the #38 Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA with a 3m26.776s.
LMP2
The #37 Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA is slowly touring back to the pits. That's the one that had the engine change and that has Cheng at the wheel.
LMP2
McMurry improves in the #45 Algarve Pro Ligier. He's done a 3m34.590s to go 17th.
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Buemi has now finally made his way back to the pits, but it took him over six minutes to complete the final sector.
LMP2
Allen puts the #40 Graff ORECA up to fourth with a lap of 3m30.400s.
LMP2
There's also an improvement from the #35 Signatech ORECA, with Ragues doing a 3m30.582s.
LMP1
The view from Buemi's car as he limped back to the pits with that problem:
LMP1
After briefly being knocked out of sixth by the leading #38 ORECA LMP2 car, Kraihamer has now restored the ByKolles to the position setting a 3m26.026s. In case you're interested, that is 7.2s off Kobayashi's best.
LMP2
Calko improves to a 3m35.312s in the #49 Bratislava Ligier. That car is 19th.
LMP2
And Calko improves again in the #49 Bratislava Ligier. But it's a Ligier, so even a 3m33.921s is still only good enough to put him 14th because there are so many ORECAs.
GTE PRO
Many of the GTE Pro drivers we talked to today suggested that 3m52s would be their idea of a good race pace, so we can take the present order – still led by the #95 Aston Martin with the 3m52.117s set last night – that many of the teams are focusing on finessing race setups at the moment. That said, Westbrook has just set the #69 Ford's fastest lap so far, 3m52.496s, while Pier Guidi has taken the #51 Ferrari round in 3m52.952s, a fraction quicker than Calado managed in that car yesterday evening.
Red flag
RED FLAG
Crash
We can't see why, but the #86 Gulf Porsche is listed as having stopped on the timing screens.
Crash
We can see from an onboard from the #7 Toyota that there's a prototype in the wall on the Mulsanne Straight. It might be the #33 Eurasia Ligier of Maris. Looks like it's hit the barrier on the right of the track.
GTE AM
Barker's #86 Gulf Porsche was also reported to be travelling slowly just before the red flag.
Stopwatch
Just before that red flag we had a new provisional pole time! Conway improved the #7's best lap to a 3m18.651s to go a tenth faster than Kobayashi yesterday. Tandy also improved the #1 Porsche's time to 3m21.083s but it remains fifth.
LMP2
Here's the only view we've had of the accident so far:
By: Matt Beer
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