Pierre Ragues and the Signatech-Alpine team will line up in 16th place overall and eighth in LMP2 when the 24 Hours of Le Mans gets underway on Saturday afternoon after a tough day at the La Sarthe circuit on Thursday. 

 

Ragues completed his required five night-time laps early on in the weather and red flag-affected session to confirm his participation in this weekend’s 90th anniversary event, which was his top priority for this evening’s session. However, the team will now prioritise finding the best race strategy to improve on its eighth place on the grid in the 24 hour race itself. 

 

The tricky track conditions experienced in Wednesday’s first qualifying practice sessions continued into Thursday with the opening session of the day, the second of the week’s two-hour qualifying session, cut short due to an extended red flag period. The Signatech-Alpine squad opted for just a few exploratory laps in that weather affected opening session but the running was meaningless with parts of the 13.6km La Sarthe circuit wet and other parts dry. 

 

Similar conditions started the second of Thursday’s sessions, which was extended to 2h30 to make up for the shortened first session, meaning that teams were initially unable to improve upon their best times from Wednesday’s qualifying session. As the track dried out in the latter stages, all cars were looking for key improvements but the combination of traffic and yellow flags meant that Signatech-Alpine had to settle for its eighth place.

 

The team will use Friday to look into all the data accumulated from the free practice and qualifying practice sessions as well as the information gathered from the official test day to prepare for the race, which could well be held in similarly mixed and changeable conditions as have been experienced this week. 

 

Pierre Ragues said: “It was important for us today to set our required five laps in the night-time conditions to allow all drivers to take part in the race, and we achieved that in spite of the difficult track conditions. The first of today’s two qualifying practice sessions was really tough with some awkward mixed track conditions, some bits dry and some bits wet, so we only really carried out some careful laps to explore the track. In the evening session, we completed more laps but when I was on track the conditions were not as good as yesterday so we were not able to improve much on lap times. As the track improved in the closing part of the session, we were able to improve our time a bit but we will be starting eighth in class and 16th overall. It might not be the qualifying result we wanted but I am confident in our package, and with the Michelin tyres, and we know that 24 hours is an extremely long race in which anything can happen. We will use our combined experience and focus to make sure we get the most out of the car, the team and ourselves. We have tomorrow to sit down and plan our race strategy, as well as taking part in the drivers’ parade, which is always one of the highlights of Le Mans week.”