Toyota retains Le Mans pole in shortened Q2

Toyota Gazoo Racing retained its advantage at the top of the timesheets during second qualifying for the 24 Hours of Le Mans on Thursday evening as a red flag brought the session to an early end.

Spearheaded by Kazuki Nakajima's lap for provisional pole on Wednesday night, Toyota was unable to beat its existing best time in a session of very few improvements throughout the 60-car field, with the #8 car shared by Nakajima, Fernando Alonso and Sebastien Buemi remaining at the head of the timesheets.

The session was interrupted by two red flag periods, with the first being called just 16 minutes after the green flag following crashes for Sven Muller in the #94 Porsche 911 RSR at Indianapolis and a high-speed shunt for Andy Priaulx in the #67 Ford GT, with the former requiring a barrier repair.

Running was able to resume once the repairs had been completed, only for a second red flag to come out with 38 minutes left on the clock following a crash for Giorgio Sernagiotto in the #47 Dallara P217 Gibson entered by Cetilar Villorba Corse. Sernagiotto was able to walk away from the shunt unscathed, but the same could not be said of his car, which was without an engine cover and had left debris strewn across the track at the first chicane on the Mulsanne Straight.

The clean-up required prompted officials to call the session, with 30 minutes' worth of lost running bolted on to Q3, which will now start ahead of schedule at 9:30pm local time at Le Mans.

The main improvements of note in the session came from the Manor-Ginetta cars, both of which rose up the order. The #6 Ginetta G60-LT-P1 Mecahrome now sits ninth overall, ahead of the LMP2 runners, while the sister #5 entry is 12th.

Patrick Pilet was able to lift the #93 Porsche entry up to fifth in GTE-Pro, while Giancarlo Fisichella moved up to third in GTE-Am with Spirit of Race's #54 Ferrari 488 GTE.