Lotterer expects to go quicker in final qualifying for Le Mans

The German beat his team-mates in the sister #2 e-tron by 1.083s with a lap right at the end of first qualifying.

"I was struggling with traffic all the stint long and I just got a last-minute info 'Andre, we want to do a lap time in case it rains tomorrow' so we put on new tyres and tried," Lotterer told AUTOSPORT.

"I had a lot of traffic and then [engineer] Leena [Gade] told me on the radio 'this last lap, we see nobody in front', so we had this last chance. I had a little traffic, I lost half a second at Mulsanne maybe, there were two cars there and I'm not sure what they were doing.

"The lap was really nice and I managed to get it right. It was quite fun to do it like that at the last second."

But he said defending pole would not be top of the list for Thursday night.

"We'll try to understand the tyres, how far we can go, make the car comfortable for the race - these are our main priorities," said Lotterer.

"And then we'll try to squeeze in a qualifying run, but it's not like we'll be gunning for the pole all the time. We'll try it once, and if it doesn't go, too bad. We'll keep going with our programme, which is learning for the race."