LMP1 teams predict much more to come in final Le Mans qualifying

The Porsche driver led the way in the first qualifying session on Wednesday night with a 3m19.733s, but he was held up significantly by traffic on the run from the Porsche Curves to the Ford Chicane.

With Timo Bernhard also catching traffic in a similar part of the lap in the sister Porsche, Toyota only one second back and Audi missing the start of Wednesday night's session due to carrying out repairs on both cars, there is likely to be more to come in pole position fight, although rain could prevent that battle from materialising.

"It was really difficult to get a clear lap," said Jani. "I believe no one managed a real good lap.

"There was a lot of traffic and quite a number of cars drove extremely slowly.

"For the time being we were good enough to take provisional pole position, but there is a lot more possible."

Porsche's LMP1 vice president Fritz Enzinger added: "As the weather conditions for Thursday don't look stable, P1 and P2 in first qualifying could become important.

"Both our cars ran into traffic on their respective fastest laps, which means both have the potential to go faster.

"We are very much looking forward to the second and third qualifying sessions."

The fastest Toyota, the #6 machine driven by Stephane Sarrazin, Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi, was one of the few leading cars to get a clear run, which left it third on the provisional grid in the hands of Sarrazin.

The second Toyota was another 1.2s back after Anthony Davidson hit traffic on his quick run at the start of qualifying, but his co-driver Sebastien Buemi described Wednesday as "much better than one year ago on the same day".

Late improvements from Loic Duval and Lucas di Grassi in the #8 Audi ensured the German manufacturer locked out the third row, eventually outpacing its sister car after initially struggling to get ahead of the lead privateer Rebellion when yellow flags and slow zones disrupted its early runs.

Both Audis joined the action late, with the #7 car missing the first few minutes fixing a small problem, while the #8 car missed the majority of the first hour as a front drivetrain problem was rectified after occurring during practice.

While Audi battled those difficulties, Sarrazin crashed the #5 Toyota in practice and Buemi briefly had to stop the #6 car on track in qualifying to perform a system reset, Porsche's first day ran without a hitch.

Porsche team principal Andreas Seidl said: "Both cars ran without technical problems and we have completed our programme as far as the weather conditions and the incidents on track allowed.

"We have found answers to all the open questions we had.

"Neel and Timo were super-fast and didn't take any avoidable risks.

"We can just hope the week continues like this."

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