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Qualifying 2: Bentleys on top again

The works Bentley team continued to demonstrate its outright speed advantage in the second qualifying session for the Le Mans 24 Hours, but this time it was Tom Kristensen who led the way, his stunning lap of 3m32.843s over 2.3s faster than David Brabham could manage in the sister machine

The second of tonight's (Wednesday) sessions started at 10pm local time, with the sun just setting and the air rapidly cooling. It was in these ideal conditions that the Dane set his blistering lap, benefiting from a lack of traffic and Michelin qualifying tyres on his way to the provisional pole.

Frank Biela put the Audi Sport UK entry into the best of the rest position behind the Bentley duo, ensuring a liberal splash of British racing green atop the timesheets. The German's best lap was 4.2s slower than the pole time, reinforcing his comments that Audi cannot beat the British team on outright pace.

Another customer R8, this one belonging to the Champion team, was in fourth position. The Racing for Holland Dome continued to look strong, with driver-owner Jan Lammers hustling the car to fifth, ahead of the Team Goh Audi Sport Japan R8.

In the GTS class, the Veloqx Prodrive Ferrari team managed to overturn the advantage enjoyed by the Oliver Gavin's Chevrolet Corvette in the first session. Thomas Enge's class-best time of 3m53.278s was 2.325s faster than the Briton could manage.

John Nielsen set the pace in the LMP675 class, whilst the Alex Job Racing Porsche held onto the provisional pole slot for the GT category.

The session was red-flagged for nearly half an hour when the LMP675-class Pilbeam broke down, spreading some of its oil over the track in the process. However, as this incident occurred well into the second hour of the session, when darkness had fallen and times had begun to drop, no-one lost out and the time was not added on to the end of the session.

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