The Grand Prix of Endurance is back, the City of Le Mans preparing to become motorsport’s ultimate battleground for the 94th time. Having defeated the defacto Kings of Le Mans and banished Porsche to the USA, Ferrari seek a fourth consecutive crown for the first time since 1964. Yet with the field having closed the performance gap and arriving hungrier than ever, it will be no easy task for the Scuderia – but it never has. Who will emerge from the Porsche curves at 4.00pm on Sunday? It’s time for the oldest endurance test of them all to begin… 

Hypercar

After the #15 made history by taking BMW’s first overall pole at Le Mans, the car that lost out on pole took its revenge, with Sebastian Bourdais taking the fastest time in the #38 JOTA Cadillac.

Bourdais was the only man to breach the 3.26sec barrier, his rapid 3.26.843 coming as the chequered flag fell, beating the #20 BMW by just under two tenths of a second, with Nyck De Vries’ #7 Toyota taking the third fasted time.

Norman Nato secured fourth for the sister #12 JOTA-run machine, just ahead of another strong run from Charles Milesi to put the #35 Alpine fourth ahead of defending race winners #83.

The Wayne Taylor-run #101 Cadillac was seventh with the best placed Ferrari, that of #51, in a lowly eighth ahead of both Peugeots, #94 ahead of #93 as both finished in the top ten of a session for the first time this week.

With most of the cars in scrutineering from the aftermath of Hyperpole Peugeot took 1-2 on the timing sheets at the top of the hour, with the #94 of Malthe Jakobsen opening with a 3.28.433, 0.17 ahead of the sister #94 as the rest of the cars emerged from the pits.

Phil Hanson’s #83 was the first of these, running just 0.3sec behind having joined both works Peuegots in missing today’s Hyperpole sessions, and improving to top the timing sheets upon its next circumference. Toyota #7 continued this trend, with Mike Conway running just 0.035sec from Hanson’s time.

Alpine also continued their strong pace shown throughout the week, the #35 running as high as second, just 0.2sec off top spot at one point held by Mike Conway, who’d improved his time to a 3.27.146.

Under the cool of night Peugeot impressively held fifth and sixth, #93 ahead of #94 and at most a second off Conway’s top time. They were sandwiched by the #101 and #38 Cadillacs.

Genesis and Aston Martin struggled to generate the pace they’d previously shown under the colder conditions, running outside the top ten for the majority of the session with both their respective cars, as BMW spent most of the session in the garage. Emerging with 25 minutes to go, the Bavarians backed up their debut pole at Le Mans with the fastest time overall for the #20, but the #15 was fifteenth.

LMP2

Ben Barnicoat continued the growing momentum of the #183 AF Corse entry by taking the fastest time of the night running.

Heading the LMP2 class as a whole and the Pro/Am subcategory, Barnicoat’s 3.36.111 was nearly seven tenths quicker than the #30 Duqueine entry, with Theodor Jensen third in the #37 CLX Motorsport entry.

IDEC Sport’s #28 was fourth, while fifth were defending race winners Inter Europol with the #43, just ahead of the sixth-placed #14 of TDS Racing.

Rounding out the top ten were Algarve Pro Racing’s #25, that led the session early on thanks to Jake Hughes’ efforts. United Autosports’ #22 placed eighth and with the #4 of Crowdstrike Racing ninth completing the order was DKR Engineering’s #3, getting another chance to show off their luminescent paintjob that, it must be said, looks stunning and pulls off the effect with ease.

LMGT3

Corvette came alive under cover of darkness, as Johnny Edgar’s #33 of TF Sport led a 1-2-4 for the American brand that had struggled for pace this week, the sister #34 Racing Team Turkey coming home second with the #13 slotting home in fourth, only beaten to third by Heart of Racing’s #23 Aston Martin.

A strong run from the Garage 59 #10 of Marvin Kirchofer promoted it to fifth ahead of Iron Lynx’s best placed #61 Mercedes AMG-GT3 Evo with the two Vista AF Corse Ferarris, #21 ahead of #54, in seventh and eighth.

Rounding out the top ten was another Ferrari, the #74 of Kessel Racing with Lin Hodenius squeezing his #79 past Riccardo Agostini’s #150 Ferrari.

That’s it for the 62 car field that makes up the 2026 24 Hours of Le Mans, they’ll return for the traditional warmup on Saturday morning before the big race itself.

image credit: T GOUREAU, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons