Second practice session: JOEST RACING ON POLE

 In front of a huge crowd it was the Joest Porsche, the 1996 winner, which set pole position just before 21 H00 in 3 mn 41.581 secs in the hands of Alboreto. Reinhold Joest was quietly confident: "You can enter 2 or 3 cars and have only one at the finish. We decided to concentrate on just a single car and it 'll be the right one!" Most of the teams fitted race engines and after having got the settings right, a number of them tried to improve their grid positions with the help of qualifying tyres.
In the works McLaren team JJ Lehto set 4th quickest time in no.42 while Eric Hélary went off at Mulsanne trying to improve no.43's lowly grid position (16th).

 The main incident of the evening was the fire in the no.40 Gulf Racing McLaren driven by Nielsen-Bscher-Goodwin due to an oil leak. The car has been withdrawn from the race which allows in the no.54 Panoz. In the no.41 McLaren, Raphanel had a slight coming-together with a Courage in the first chicane while on a flying lap.

 In the Nissan camp the main aim was to get everything right for the race itself and there was no attempt to re-edit Brundle's pre-qualifying performance. Nonetheless, Van de Poele-Patrese-Suzuki in the no.22 R390 set the third-quickest time overall.
The quickest of the private Porsches was the BMS Scuderia Italia GT1 which was sixth-fastest overall followed the Kremer Racing entry no.30 and that of Roock Racing no.32 in the hands of Wendlinger-McNish-Ortelli. Both GTL Listers qualified in spite of a small "off" by no.45. Seventeenth-quickest was the Dams-entered Panoz but Driot's team will be looking for a finish as in the previous races the car has suffered too many engine problems. David Price managed to qualify both his cars thanks to the withdrawal of the Gulf McLaren. There will be only a single Lotus at the start on Saturday (no.49) as the Giroix-Deletraz car missed its qualification by just under a second. Lammers, who qualified the Lotus in 20th place was quite satisfied with its behaviour and reckoned he could have gone 2 or 3 seconds quicker.

 In the prototype category Franck Freon qualified the Mazda ahead of the Parejra-Salazar- Toivenen BRM. The quickest of the Courage entries was the "Vaillante" C41 in spite of low straight line speed according to Jérome Policand All Yves Courage's cars have qualified as have the two 333SP Ferraris. Although with the exception of the Joest car, the prototypes have been generally slower than the GT1 s they are in with a chance if the weather conditions are tough. They are lighter, and easier on their tyres if it is hot thus reducing the number of pit stops by doing triple stints.The non-qualifier in this category was the Lavaggi-Maury Laribière Kremer K8 which crashed.

 In the GT2 Category the works Chrysler team concentrated on running in the engines and gearboxes destined for the race and did not do that many laps. Well-matched driver teams allied to cars that have been made much more reliable than last year make this team favourite for victory in this category.

 Although favoured in terms of numbers the Porsches will have a very tough time battling for a win, and the quickest was the no.74 GT2 entered by Roock Racing which will lead the Stuttgart attack against the Americans as both Saleen Mustangs also qualified well. The 911 driven by Jarier-Leconte-Chereau will count on its reliability. The Marcoses had a hard time in qualifying and only one got in as no.71 was eliminated after transmission problems.
Migault hoped to be a part of the driver team of no. 70 in place of Suzuki who failed to qualify, but was unable to do his 3 night laps.