Rain and race incidents meant that the drivers who began the traditional pole position chase did not do so in the best conditions in the last two qualifying sessions for the 2013 Le Mans 24 Hours.
As a result the no. 2 Audi driven by Loïc Duval, Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish that was quickest on Wednesday evening will start from pole on Saturday 22nd June.
The weather didn’t help things in the second qualifying sessions on Thursday 20th June. With less than 15 minutes to go before the green light unleashed the cars, a heavy shower soaked around two-thirds of the circuit. The drivers went out one by one on a very tricky track but they didn’t set any meangingful times.
As the road began to dry out the no. 40 Oreca-Nissan went off on the Mulsanne straight at the second chicane leading to the session being red-flagged with around 32 minutes left.
In order not to penalise the teams Race Control decided to bring forward, by 30 minutes the start of the second part of the session, which lasted 2h 30m.The drivers went out at 21h30 and not 22h00 as originally scheduled.
With 43 minutes still to go the drivers started to chase the pole position again after more interruptions.
Finally, the fastest time on Wednesday in LM P1 was not beaten so on pole went to the no. 2 Audi (Duval, Kristensen, McNish) thanks to the Frenchman’s 
3m22.439s on 19th June. The R18 e-tron-quattro will start in front of its two sister cars no. 1 (3m23.696s), which snatched second at the last moment thanks to André Lotterer who improved his Wednesday’s time, from no.3 (3m24.341s). The first TS030 Toyota Hybrid of Wurz, Lapierre and Nakajima (3m26.654s) will start the race in fourth place 4.3s off the quickest time.
In LM P2, Olivier Pla in the no. 24 Morgan-Nissan n°24 which he shares with Alex Brundle and David Heinemeier Hansson clinched pole in the dying seconds with 3m38.621s from the no.26 Oreca 03-Nissan n°26 (3m39.535s) and the no. 38 Zytek-Nissan (3m40.459s).
As on Wednesday the LM GTE Pro category was dominated by Aston Martin, and no. 99 (Makowiecki, Senna, Bell) improving its time to 3m54.635s followed by another Aston no. 97 (3m55.455s) and the first Porsche n°92 in 3m55.491s. It was the same story in LM GTE Am thanks to Nygaard, Poulsen and Simonsen’s V8 Vantage (no. 95, 3m55.776s) from the no. 88 Porsche (3m58.889s) and the no. 96 Aston Martin Vantage V8 (3m59.805s).
The cars entered in the Le Mans 24 Hours will have a final 45-minute warm-up session on Saturday 22nd June at 9 h 00 before the start of the 90th anniversary race at 15 h 00. By Melissa Warren
