Biela expects fierce battle for pole

The three-time race winner believes that despite teams historically using the Wednesday and Thursday night qualifying sessions for race preparation, nearly all cars will attempt quick qualifying runs to gain a psychological advantage going into the race itself.

Pescarolo Sport driver Franck Montagny set a blisteringly quick time around the La Sarthe circuit in last week's official free practice session, beating the fastest time set by Dindo Capello in the new diesel-powered Audi R10 TDI by nearly two seconds.

However, Biela is confident the pace of the new R10 will allow his team to challenge for pole.

"In practice we were all surprised how good our car was," Biela told autosport.com. "During testing there are always some little things that we have to sort out but we expected more trouble in terms of finding a good balance. What we found was that the setup and balance was very good.

"It handles how we want to have it. We were just concentrating on the programme, sorting tyres out and trying to get long runs in and that was it.

"That definitely gives me confidence going into this week. There is no doubt that the car was very good from the beginning. Having been there last weekend everyone is being even more confident. It was very positive and everyone else seems to be well-prepared.

"The priority this week is definitely finding a race setup and making sure all the three drivers feel confident with the car over a longer distance.

"But of course with the pace we have I'm very sure we will try to look as good as possible in qualifying.

"Everybody knows that pole position is not necessarily a race win but if you are there it is a nice thing. It would be good.

"We will definitely bolt on a set of tyres at the end of qualifying and go for that quick lap. I'm pretty sure that is going to happen, unless we run into some problems and we have to sort some other things out. That's what everybody does."

"We will use the first few hours to make sure that everything is working well and in the end we will go faster to try and get a good qualifying lap."

Le Mans 24 Hours qualifying is run over two days. Each day has two, two-hour sessions. The first runs in daylight from 7 to 9pm local time, with a night-time session held from 10pm until midnight.