At the end of the first part of the session there were 3 Audis in the first 3 places in the following order : 9, 7 and 8 whose fastest laps were set by McNish, Capello and Pirro respectively. They were separated by just 5/100 of a second : 3 mn 37. 653 secs, 3 mn 37.787 secs and 3 mn 37. 886 secs.
Next up was David Brabham's Panoz in 3 mn 41.013 secs. Johansson's Lola-Judd, the Konrad Motorsport Lola, driven by Lammers-Kox-Coronel, all lapped in the 3 mn 40s but as the session ended the second of the works Panozes in the hands of Katoh-O'Connell-Raphanel snatched a provisional 5th place. The Rafanelli Team Lola (Schiattarella-de Radigues-Naspetti) plus the C60 Courage of Philippe Gache-Formato-Cottaz also showed flashes of speed while the Reynard­Mopars were well down the field due to teething troubles and lack of testing.
The quickest of the LMR Cadillacs, supposedly the main challengers to the Audis, were in 10th and 11th places respectively (Goossens-Tinseau-Kolby ahead of Lagorce-Leitzinger-Wallace). However, the US-entered cars were using engines that had already covered a lot of kilometres.
The second session more or less confirmed the trends of the first. The main incident in a fairly sophorific evening came when the No. 7 Audi stopped just beyond the pit exit in a cloud of grey smoke due probably to a ruptured oil line. This did not prevent it from setting provisional pole in 3 mn 37.525 secs. The other R8Rs also went slightly quicker and finally, there were only 2/1000 secs
between No.7 and No.8 with No.9 in third place. The main improvement came from the works Panoz which finished the evening 4th and 5th with David Brabham setting a 3 mn 39.156 secs lap in No.11 while No.12 in the hands of Katoh got round in 3 mn 41.359 secs.They were followed by 2 Lolas the Rafanelli car driven by Schiattarella-de Radigues-Naspetti and the Konrad entry in the hands of Lammers who put in a few pretty lurid laps!. Into 8th came Johansson's Reynard-Judd, then the Panoz entered by the Japanese TV Asahi Team Dragon and the Courages with Pescarolo'Sport's C50 ahead of Gache's C60 which was immobilised throughout the session with ignition problems. The quickest of the Cadillacs (Lagorce-Leitzinger-Wallace) was down in 11th place just ahead of the first of the Reynard-Mopars, No.5 (Dalmas-Minassian-Belloc). The Oreca team ran into alternator problems on No.5 and fuel pressure on No.6 so they were unable to do as much testing as hoped. The No.15 BMW of Thomas Bscher and Jean-Marc Gounon was down in a disappointing 22nd spot as its drivers were unable to find the correct set-up.
 

The Reynard-Volkswagens proved as quick as expected and the fastest was in among the slower LMR Cadillacs, Panoz and the BMW. Deletraz-Kelleners-Terrien finished the evening in 18th place and the other Fred Stadler-entered Reynard-ROC (Bouillon-Gene-Policand) was just 2 places behind. The best of the WRs (Bouvet-Daoudi-Pompidou) was some 7 seconds back while the Debora of Goudy­Lemarié-Yvon was narrowly headed by the Canadian-entered Lola of Maxwell-Graham-Wilkins and by the quickest of the LM GT3 Porsches.
 

The red and white Oreca Vipers dominated the early part of the first session but just before the interruption at 21h00 the No.63 C5-R Chevrolet Corvette driven by Justin Bell grabbed first place in a time of 3 mn 58.636 secs. At the start of the second part the Chrysler-viper No.51 driven by Karl Wendlinger snatched back provisional pole in this category in 3 mn 56.636 secs which was to remain unbeaten for the rest of the evening.
Paul Belmondo's Viper was hit by faulty shock absorbers (new ones will be fitted for this evening's session) while the 911 GT 2s of Freisinger and Konrad were reliable but out-classed.