Wednesday in race week at Le Mans sees the start of the track action for the 60 competitors in the 24 hours.
The first 4 hour practice session will start at 16h00 'till 20h00. With the weather changing fast and being rather unpredictable, teams will need all the track time they can get to set up their cars properly for wet and dry conditions during the race. Expect lots of action and traffic in this first session, which will probably be run in the wet.
Later tonight at 22h00 qualifying will get underway for a 2 hour session. Over both night sessions today and tomorrow, all drivers must complete at least 5 laps to be eligible to race. Most teams will have their drivers do their requiered laps today to focus on qualifying tomorrow evening.
Also on track for their first practice session will be the cars of the "Road to Le Mans" race. A mix of LMP3 prototypes and GT3 cars from all ACO championships and some extra invites will form a varied field of 39 cars; 20 LMP3 prototypes and 19 GT3's. From 20h30 to 21h30 the drivers will head out for an hour of practice on the Le Mans track.
At the moment it's sunny at the track, but predictions for this afternoon are looking rather worse. Heavy rain is expected during practice, the nightly qualifying session might see some dry conditions. The weekend forecast seems to be improving but a wet race start and finish are still possible.
Kristof Vermeulen.
