Le Mans 24 Hours: Alpine on provisional pole!

A late flying lap saw Ferdinand Habsburg put the #35 Alpine A424 at the top of the Le Mans Qualifying time-sheet on soft MICHELIN Pilot Sport Endurance slicks. The #12 and #101 Cadillacs were second and third in the week's first fight for pole-position. Neither last year's winning #83 Ferrari nor the two Peugeot 9X8s made it through to Thursday evening's Hyperpole 1 session.

Wednesday afternoon's free practice session was topped by the #12 Cadillac with a time of 3m23.786s, posted by Earl Bamber. A number of Hypercar teams used the three-hour run to complete three stints (more than 500km) on a single set of medium MICHELIN Pilot Sport Endurance slicks.

The evening's action kicked off with 'Qualifying' (30 minutes), the first of the week's three 'knockout' shootouts for pole position, with only the 15 fastest of the 18 Hypercars eligible to take part in the tomorrow's Hyperpole 1.

Equipped with either medium or soft Michelin tires, the headlining prototypes took to the track at 7:30pm with the track temperature standing at 24°C. Both Aston Martin Valkyries showed well early on, as did the BMW M Hybrid V8s and Cadillac V-Series.Rs. However, Habsburg trumped them all with a time of 3m23.135s – faster than 2025's pole-winning effort – in the dying moments to put the #35 Alpine provisionally at the front of Saturday's grid.

The #12 Cadillac, #101 Cadillac, #20 BMW and #38 Cadillac rounded out the session's top five, while seven of the eight carmakers involved in the Hypercar category earned a ticket for Hyperpole 1 – including Genesis which is competing at Le Mans for the first time.

The three cars missing from tomorrow's fight will be the two Peugeot 9X8s, as well as last year's Le Mans-winning #83 Ferrari.