Pescarolo Sweep Front Row

Emmanuel Collard was the driver who set the pole lap of 3m34.715s, moving the car he's sharing with Erik Comas and Jean-Christophe Boullion ahead of the sister car driven by Soheil Ayari, Eric Helary and World Rally Champion Sebastien Loeb that failed to improve its time from the 3m35.555s it set in the first half of the session.

It had long been clear that no other team would be able to get close to the pace of the Pescarolos, so some simply didn't bother as twilight turned to full dark, preferring instead to set up their cars as well as they could for the race or simply to park up to save their machinery.

The Frank Biela/Allan McNish/Emanuele Pirro Champion Racing Audi R8 ended up as best of the rest, with its fastest lap of 3m37.795s being more than a couple of seconds adrift.

Emphasising just how close it was in the wake of the Pescarolos, their sister car driven by Tom Kristensen, JJ Lehto and Marco Werner was less than 1.2s slower but this was good only for eighth on the final grid.

The Jim Gainer International team provided welcome chassis variety at the sharp end of the grid, lapping their Dome with its white and red-spotted liveried Dome fourth fastest in 3m38.094s in the hands of 2004 race winner Seiji Ara and team-mates Ryo Michigami and Katsutomo Kaneishi.

The third Audi, the ORECA-run R8, was fifth fastest in the hands of Jean-Marc Gounon, Eric Helary and Renault F1 test driver Franck Montagny, their best lap covered in 3m38.281s.

Courage and DBA chassis qualified sixth and seventh fastest for Jonathan Cochet, Bruce Jouanny and Shinji Nakano and Jamie Campbell-Walter, Nicolas Minassian and 1988 Le Mans winner Andy Wallace respectively.

A Dallara and the Zytek made it seven different chassis in the top 10, with the Rollcentre Racing Dallara-Judd LMP that Joao Barbosa and Vanina Ickx are sharing with team owner Martin Short heading the Sam Hignett/Haruki Kurosawa/John Stack Team Jota Zytek 04S which impressed in the hands of these Le Mans novices.

Didier Andre claimed the LMP2 honours for Paul Belmondo Racing's number 37 Courage-Ford he shares with Paul Belmondo and Rick Sutherland, lapping 12th fastest overall in 3m42.301s to be more than 2.451s faster than their closest rival: the Intersport Racing Lola of Sam Hancock, Gregor Fisken and Liz Halliday.

Chamberlain-Synergy Motorsport put up a valiant performance in the final two hours, enjoying untroubled running for the first time and getting under the 4 minute barrier with Gareth Evans slotting in a lap of 3m55.531s in the final moments to outpace LMP2 rivals PiR and their Pilbeam and lap at 109.69 per cent of pole time.

The Aston Martins have qualified one-two in GT1 with their British Racing Green DBR9s, putting them clear of the best of the Corvette C6.Rs.

It was thought that the American team was packing up early, as they didn't consider it was worth risking anything simply to gain a place or two on the grid.
 
However, this wasn't the end of it as they played a game of brinkmanship and the Corvettes went out with just quarter of an hour to go.

Just as they did so, Aston Martin Racing extended its advantage with David Brabham dipping under 3m50s in the DBR9 he's sharing with Stephane Sarrazin and Darren Turner, putting it 2.5s clear of the Olivier Beretta/Oliver Gavin/Jan Magnussen C6.R.

Then Tomas Enge did better still in the sister DBR9, taking it down to 3m48.576s with 10 minutes to go.

Alex Job Racing held on to their position at the head of the GT2 class with Mike Rockenfeller and Marc Lieb leading the way in their blue and yellow Porsche 911 GT3-RSR to outpace the similar car of arch-rivals Flying Lizard Motorsport piloted by Seth Nieman, Lonnie Pechnik and Johannes van Overbeek as well as the works Panoz Experante GTLMs.