Press Release N° 2
19:00 to 21:00

Audi ahead but under pressure.
Thursday, June 14th, 2001
The Audis had to battle hard on Wednesday to get two cars in the two first places for the first set of qualifying practice sessions. They saw their domination contested by Racing for Holland's Lammers and the Bentley with Brundle at the wheel.

The Audis were shaken but finally managed to bag the two first places in the first set of practice fought out on Wednesday. As in the preliminaries, Rinaldo Capello proved to be the fastest but the Italian waited until the last five minutes to take the provisional pole position with a time of 3:34.880. For a long while the N°1 Audi was sure of grabbing the 1st place in the practice thanks to Emanuele Pirro's great lap times. It wasn't until Capello began to feel threatened by the fantastic return of Jan Lammers on his astonishing Racing for Holland car, that he beat his team-mates' times. An encouraging session, however, for the first private Champion Racing Audi, that came in 4th place despite being handicapped at the beginning of the session by a problem with the gearbox selector. Disappointment for Stephan Johansson who only managed to fly the mythical orange and blue colours of his Audi-Gulf in 10th position, having occupied 3rd place in mid-session.
Jan Lammers confirmed the good disposition of his Dome. The boss of Racing for Holland could be happy with the 'trick' played on the Audis. Ten minutes from the end of this first qualifying practice session, the Dutchman pushed ahead to 2nd place after having started his first hour of practice fairly timidly in 9th place. Finally, Lammers had to give up his position behind the leader, but with only 1:472 separating him from Capello, the Dutch driver proved he was a serious contender to upset the winning habits of the German cars.
Less surprising, the Bentleys' good performance, especially the number 7 driven by Martin Brundle, who put up a good fight against the Audis before contenting himself with 5th place, only 1:665 away from Capello. The Brit played Ding-Dong Scrap for a long while with the Audis, notably taking 3rd place from Capello just as Lammers was also threatening the German cars.
4:394 behind, the Chrysler-Team Playstation driven by the Beretta-Lamy-Wendlinger trio, proved to be a serious outsider despite the small gap between them and the 5 lead cars. Beretta notably did all he could in the last few minutes of the session when he finally overtook Bernard's Cadillac, who took his time before finding his marks. In the Chrysler camp, they claim they intend to improve, with Dalmas making the most of all his experience in order to grab 8th place.
Disappointment-wise, the Panoz cars didn't manage to convince anyone. Even worse, Magnussen's N°12 stopped just after the Playstation Chicane in the middle of the Hunaudières just before the start of the race, before being handicapped by a blockage in the gearbox. In the end, the cars of Don Panoz took only the disappointing positions of 19th and 22nd place, well below their expectations.
Disappointment also for the Courage-Pescarolo Sport cars, brilliantly overtaken by the Judd-powered Courage driven by Philippe Gache. Despite an electrical problem at the end of the session, the SMG satisfactorily. The N°34 MG was also in for a "nice" surprise : sure of getting into the Top Ten, it finally shifted down into 12th place. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable performance for an LMP675, which all in all managed to stand firmly in the face of many a heavyweight prototype!. The other MG, however, didn't manage to complete a lap, due to some alternator trouble, which in turn caused misfiring.
In the GTS class, after a great fight between the two cars from Corvette Racing Gary Pratt, N°63 driven by Fellows beat Pilgrim at the wheel of N°64. What a shame that the Chrysler-Larbre Compétition-Chéreau was unable to get involved in the fight at the end of the race, handicapped by mechanical problems.
Finally, the French team could find some success in the GT category, since the N°80 Porsche driven by Chéreau, Dumez and Goueslard took first place. Another noteworthy performance came from the Luc Alphand team, which finished in 4th position in GT. Not bad for a first time !.