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Peugeot left rivals Audi trailing in qualifying for this weekend's Le Mans 24 Hours sportscar classic.

The French company filled the top three spots on the grid, with the fastest Audi in fourth, five seconds slower than the pace-setting Peugeot.

Frenchman Stephane Sarrazin set the pole position lap of three minutes 18.513 seconds, eights seconds faster than last year's pole time.

Scot Allan McNish set the fastest Audi time in 3:23.847.

But McNish is confident Audi, who have won the race for the last two years with their diesel-powered R10, will be much more competitive in the race.

"We knew that Peugeot were our main competition and that in qualifying especially, they have a faster car than us," said McNish, who forms a vastly experienced line-up with co-drivers Rinaldo Capello and seven-time winner Tom Kristensen.

"But in the four previous races we've had with them already this season, Audi has shown that it can run much closer to its qualifying pace than Peugeot are able to in race trim.



Gonna be a nice close race then. Bout time Audi werent the only ones capable of winning. The one time the didnt win the Le Mans, is when they entered the Bentley cars, and they won instead !!!

Roll on Saturday

Could be interesting.

The French diesel engines where really good 10 years ago, but the the german motors took over.

Have the french got the egde again - will this performance filter down to the road cars, as every french diesel Ive driven recently has been lame compaired to the german motor!

Its a possibilty. However, Le Mans and Sportscars in general arent what they used to be for Technological Advances. If Peugeot were to rejoin F1, Im sure technologies would be passed down onto the mass market range.

As For Le mans, one example is that one of the LMP1 Teams, is using an Aston Martin engine, same one as in the DBR9.

However, I could be wrong. Look at Audi, theyve incorporated Performance Diesels into their range now, Surely helped by data, technology and experiences of running the R10s at Le Mans...




Thats the peugeot Engine... V12 (700bhp) as opposed to the V10 of the Audi..(650bhp)