First practice session
PORSCHE TOPS THE TIME SHEETS

 The fastest 10 times were set by 7 different makes which promises a 24 hour race full of suspense. Under clement skies the first car to break the 4 minute barrier was JJ Lehto's McLaren but he was quickly overtaken by the Porsches. Half-way through the session the Dalams-Kelleners-Collard 911 set the bench mark time in 3 mn 45.490 secs beating the 1996 pole. When practice restarted no.26 ran into electronic problems requiring a dashboard change and Boutsen took advantage of this to do a 3 mn 44.234 secs, the fastest lap of the evening. Like last year the most dangerous rival for the works Porsches was the 1996 winner the Joest Porsche. Alboreto was third-quickest overall and fastest of the prototypes ahead of the 333 SP Ferrari of Max Papis. Michell Ferté in the other Ferrari was hit by varied problems. Half the rear wing fell off under braking for the first chicane and then the car sprung an oil leak. This will entail an engine change for the second day's session.

 Quickest and 10th overall in the Courage camp was Frederik Ekblom. The C36 that the Swede is sharing with Ricci and Liberty had a trouble free practice. This was not the case for the La Filière car which ran into steering and then gearbox problems. Even so Clerico managed to set a good 11th time,5 places ahead of the Andrettis and Grouillard. The C 41 was held up by a defective accelerator.

 The BRM suffered from an overall lack of mileage but Pareja was optimistic about the Anglo-Japanese car's potential. The Mazda did not manage to break the 4 minute barrier unlike Lavaggi's K8 Kremer whose sister car was on the non-qualified list due to clutch problems and electrical cut-outs. Behind the Porsches the quickest of the GT1s was the Lehto-Soper-Piquet McLaren which ended up 5th quickest overall ahead of the fastest of the private GT1s, the Scuderia Italian car driven, by Pierluigi Martini who showed that the private Porsches are in with a chance in 1997. Brundle came out top in the Nissan camp but way down on his May time. No.23 had clutch problems which prevented Comas from getting under 3 mn 50 secs.

 Perhaps the biggest surprise was the 8th quickest time overall set by the Panoz driven by Franck Lagorce. The American car is as spectacular in the corners as on the straight and has at last given a glimpse of its true potential. It was a better evening for the DAMS team (in spite of running out of fuel late on) than for David Price. The Brabham-Bundy-McCarthy car spent a lot of time in the pits because of an oil leak, and it was only at the end of the session that David Brabham managed a flying lap to snatch qualification.
In the Lister camp no.46 suffered from clutch problems and no.45 from a defective gearbox which means that the car is on the list of non-qualifiers for the moment.

 In the GT2 Category the Chrysler Vipers ruled the roost with Archer-Ayari-Duez in front of Beretta-Gache-Dupuy. The third of the Oreca cars was much slower due to fuel pressure problems. At the end of the session the no.62 Viper ran out of fuel during a fuel consumption test. A successful one or not? The Ford Saleen Mustangs showed their potential and Price Cobb was third-quickest overall in the category ahead of the Chereau Porsche driven by Jean-Pierre Jarier. Both Marcoses ran into engine problems with a down-on-power engine for no.70 and a broken rocker arm on no.71. Due to a lack of spare parts a rocker arm was taken from no.70 and grafted onto no.71 thus enabling François Migault to go out at the end of the session. It seemed to work and Migualt hopes to qualify today. Badly adjusted engine management resulted in a lack of power for the Callaway of Coppelli-Agusta-Graham and a similar problem hit the Ligonnet-Seiler-Schumacher Porsche. The Pilgrim-Ahrlé-Eichmann 911 went off on a few occasions and also had to stop to change a turbo !