Guy Smith final qualifying report

The Lola-Rebellion Coupe sportscar of Guy Smith starts the Le Mans 24 Hour endurance sportscar race from the ninth row of the grid on Saturday afternoon (12 June).

Smith's co-driver Jean-Christophe Boullion set the 18th fastest time in tonight's (THURSDAY) final qualifying session for the 56-car field. The Frenchman's quickest time of 3mins 37.093secs around the 8.47-mile track coming prior to Boullion losing control of the Lola while attempting an overtaking manoeuvre.

"Unfortunately our times from Wednesday's opening qualifying session were disallowed after Jean-Christophe [Boullion] was deemed to have overtaken under red flags," reflected Guy.

"That was a shame because we'd have lined-up around 15th on the grid. Thursday's qualifying session began with the track still damp but drying after a torrential rain storm, including thunder and lightning, earlier in the afternoon.

"Jean-Christophe was flying but was then caught out at the exit of the Porsche Curves causing major damage and prematurely ending our qualifying. It's not ideal to have missed so much running tonight but we'll be flying on race day I'm sure. Hopefully we've got our bad luck out of the way over the past couple of days so we can look forward to an uneventful race weekend."

Smith, aged 35, from Beverley, will be contesting the annual race for the seventh time in his career alongside Boullion and Andrea Belicchi (Italy)

The race is scheduled to begin at 2pm BST.

-source: guy smith