Press Release N° 5
10 pm to Midnight

Capello steals the pole right from the start
Friday, June 15th, 2001
This second session caused some strong emotions right from the beginning. Rinaldo Capello set the best lap in front of Audi n°1. Had it not been for Racing for Holland, the Audis would have filled up the top four slots !.

Rinaldo Capello played an unpleasant trick on his fellow team-mates of Audi n°1. Only 8 minutes into the second session of qualifying on Thursday, the Italian stole the pole by only a fraction of a second, beating  Kristensen by 0.029 seconds. Despite a very long stint on Audi n°1, Emanuele Pirro failed to improve on Capello's 3:32.429, the night-time not helping matters. Only Jan Lammers' Racing for Holland car was able to prevent the firm from Ingolstadt from having the top four slots to themselves. His good performance during the first half of the second qualifying session has earned him a place on the second row of the starting grid.
Consequently, Stephan Johansson and his Audi-Gulf n°4 will be starting the race on row 3, even though the Swedish driver was one of the only competitors to improve on his time during the last two hours of this final session, in 3:35.128, i.e. about three tenths slower than Dome n°9.
Apart from this unheaval in the lead, there were not many changes in this last part of the practice session. Indeed, only three cars managed to improve on their time from the first half of this second practice session.
MG n°34 managed to gain one place with a time of 3:40.243 - it now ranks 14th. It is now ahead of the Dome-Den Bla Avis. It is true that the Dutch car was very much handicapped by a change of engine in the second half of the session. MG was well inspired to take their car out only for the night-driving. Despite the MG n°33's poor performance, the two British cars will logically be in the lead in the LMP 675 category.
The Bentleys were more discreet today than they were yesterday, when they were on the Audis' heels. The prestigious British cars were forced to give up their position notably to the Cadillac n°5 of the Franco-Belgian trio Collard-Goossens-Bernard.
Note the very important progression of Panoz n°11, which gained four places, with a time improved by 9 seconds (3:43.498 - compared to a previous time of 3:51.969). The other Panoz, driven by Brabham-Magnussen-Lagorce, also improved its time, from 3:48.083 yesterday to 3:42.974 today. On the other hand, Philippe Gache's Courage Judd n°19 didn't repeat its excellent performance of yesterday. It must be said in their defence that they drove throughout this session with the gearbox and engine designed for the race.
Saleen-Allen Speedlab n°60 realized a brilliant performance by improving its time to 3:52.849, 3 seconds ahead of its first opponent. It will leave in pole position in the LM-GTS class. After having achieved this time, the team simply decided to stop half an hour before the end of the session.
Nothing changed in the LM-GT category. By finishing at the 38th position, the Callaway succeeded in resisting to the Porsche armada in a category that is usually the exclusive preserve of the Stuttgart company.