Porsche still on top after shortened Le Mans qualifying session

Neel Jani's time of 3m17.767s in the #18 Porsche, set last night, remains top of the timesheets after the first two of tonight's four hours of qualifying, which was cut short by a red flag.

This was caused by damage to the barrier sustained when Jan Magnussen's GTE Pro-class Chevrolet Corvette C7.R crashed in the Porsche Curves.

There were some improvements in the top five, however, with Nick Tandy shaving 0.435s off the best time of the #19 Porsche.

But this was not enough to move the car up from third place, leaving it still 1.1s slower than the #17 Porsche qualified second yesterday by Timo Bernhard.

The trio of Audis continues to be led by the #8 car thanks to Loic Duval's time of yesterday, although Andre Lotterer jumped from sixth to fifth place in the #7 entry ahead of the third Audi.

Toyota continued to hold seventh and eighth places, with Sebastien Buemi having an eventful session in the #1 car as his early lap times were deleted because of exceeding track limits, and then spinning while under a red flag.

That red flag was caused by several cars stopping on circuit, including the #13 Rebellion of Dominik Kraihamer, the #47 KCMG ORECA that holds LMP2-class pole position and the #55 GTE Am Ferrari of Duncan Cameron, which ended up in the gravel.

Further back, Pierre Kaffer hoisted the ByKolles-run CLM to 11th place with a lap of 3m36.825s, not long before the second and final red flag of the session.

This put it ahead of all three Nissan's, with the #23 car still in 13th despite Olivier Pla's attempts to improve its time tonight.

The other two Nissans are 18th and 22nd, although the #21 car that had a difficult first day of qualifying has climbed ahead of the #22 car thanks to inaugural GT Academy winner Lucas Ordonez setting a 3m39.992s.

In LMP2, nobody threatened the KCMG ORECA and although several cars made minor improvements, Greaves Motorsport, Jota Sport and the #26 G-Drive Racing (OAK) entries still occupy the top four places.

The biggest mover was Murphy Prototypes, which climbed from 14th to ninth through Nathanael Berthon's 3m41.827s, after the car missed the majority of Thursday's qualifying session.

In GTE, Aston Martin Racing continues to lead the way in both Pro (#99 qualified first by Richie Stanaway yesterday) and Am (#98 of Pedro Lamy), with no significant changes up front since yesterday's session

However, the #51 AF Corse Ferrari, which lost its second place in GTE Pro overnight, did works its way back up to eighth in class in the hands of Toni Vilander.

The final session starts at 2130 local time, 30 minutes earlier than planned, to allow two-and-a-half hours of running to compensate for the lost track time.

QUALIFYING RESULTS: