With rain falling on and off throughout the day and another breif downpour just beforeat 18:30hrs, the chance of improving any grid position was slim for all cars. A delay of 30 minutes for the start (new start time: 19:30hrs) may allpw the track to dry a little. A classic Le Mans qualifying session previously had doused the Porsche Curves in oil that needed cleaning up.

Prior to Qualifying, Tom Milner shared his thoughts: "I think we’re probably one of the favourites for the race because of the win last year. The team have again prepared a good car for a 24hr race which is what all this is about. That’s what matters to me, to finish and do well - that’s what they did last year and they won the race. Our pace is a lot better this year; I don’t think we have the ultimate speed to match the Porches and Ferraris but for sure we’re right their at their heels and if they have any problems, we’ll be right there to pick up the scraps.

I’m just going to get out there tonight and get some more experience in the wet here becuase it looks like it might rain for the race so the more time we have in the wet the better it is.

To add another complication into the mix, all drivers must run a qualifying time within 125% of the average overall top 3 times, and 115% of the leader of their own class. That is 4 mins 22 seconds and with such a change in the weather, it's easier said than done! Going into this session, there were about 30 drivers who had to achieve this.

"It’s really unpredictable with the weather, isn’t it! Said Watts. "Most of the time you’re chasing the circuit because of the weather so we’ll just have to see what happens really.

"Tom [Kimber-Smith]’s got to get his laps in within the percentage that they set so that’s the most important thing. We’ll let him do that, make sure the car’s ok and possibly save the car for the weekend. Like I’ve said before, the lap time in qualifying is completely and utterly not important. So long as we don’t have any problems like last night, the handling, it’s easy to drive, predictable, consistent, which is what you want for a longer stint."

Part 1

Eventually, cars hit the track at 19:30hrs and on their 'out' lap, toeerntial rain poured for 30 minutes. Everybody came back to the pits because of the sheer volume of water coming down; it's impossivle to improve on any times, and there's no point risking throwing the car into a wall!

Dean was the first Team LNT driver to test out the track conditions - and not holding back! His first flying lap was a massive 8 seconds faster than any other GT2 car with a 5:01.949 and then a 4:55.201

Kimber-Smith soon follows suit and slips in a 4:44.809 on his 3rd flying lap on a drying track, but there's still the odd fine shower...

Heading towards the end of the session, Rob Bell was out in #82 on some hard wets to set the car's fastest lap: a 4.50.879 (6th quickest) and looking good in the first two sectors of the following lap, but had to abort it and come into the pits; park the car and save it for part 2.

Watts out in #81, went third fastest in class of this session with a 4:41.377 right at the end as he became more accustomed to driving in the wet, in the dark.

Richard Dean: "We need to pray to the Lord that is doesn’t start like that! By my calculations, there’s 49 cars in front of us - that’s a goddam lotta spray!

"The car is absolutely mega, when you’re on your own and it can be as wet as you like. In relation to the Porches I’ve followed and even the GT1 Aston Martin and a Corvette, we were really good! It’s just literally the spray from a quicker car like when a Prototype comes past you, the spray just hangs in the air. It’s not like your windscreen wipers can’t cope, or can’t shift it off your windscreen, it’s just like driving into a strong mist or fog.

"You wouldn’t mind if you were doing it at Santa Pod on a drag strip; you just keep the steering wheel straight - but the road kinks left and right here which is a bit of a bugger!

"I actually think we’ll be really really good if it rains [for the race] - we’ll be very competitive. But the problem with the rain is there is a large element of what determines the result out of your hands and into the hands of luck. You can get involved in someone else’s accident, you can absolutely quite innocently end up in a position where you cannot physically see and you find that this time there is actually a car sidewards in the track in front of you because it’s spun off and you won’t see it until it’s too late.

"So you end up with a feeling like ‘should I back off a little bit here because I’m probaby doing about 180 mph, and if I back off I’ll be doing about 150mph, will it make a big difference?’ So you end up going 150 / 180... but that’s the problem - I don’t like it being out of my hands and that’s what the wet does.

"In terms of balance and how competitive is the car? It’s very."

Part 2

Grid positions would definitely hold from yesterday. Not one car had improved their time in part 1, and it wasn't looking good for this two hour session either.

In fact it was a bit of a 'non-event'... Nobody was pushing and risking throwing their car off of the circuit; Rob Bell was the only driver to go out in #82 and Milner in #81.

With a couple of pit stops during the session for tyres and checks, the cars came in and parked early - both drivers happy with the car and the darkness...!

Rob Bell: "Everything’s good. I got I think 3 laps in one after the other so it was good to get a good run.

" In changeable conditions it’s always tricky because one lap you get to a corner it’s wet the next lap it’s dry, then it rains again - so you have to be a little bit cautious but in terms of lap times, I think we’re pretty there or thereabouts in the wet so much happier. We lost all the time yesterday in the dry and I’m fairly sure we could have gone higher up the grid but as you know, the difference between pole to 8th or 10th on the first lap here is a couple of seconds and you have 24hrs to improve so I think we’re alright."

So the practices and testing is over - bar a 45 minute warm-up tomorrow. The stage is set for the 2007 24 hours of Le Mans on Saturday at 3pm local time.

The weather forecast is for a dry Saturday into the night with rain coming on Sunday. Bell's hoping the former will prevail:

"Any driver, if you’re quickest in the wet, and it’s a 24hr race, you still want to race in the dry because it’s just - in the wet, you can stumble across a puddle and that’s your 24hrs over whether you’re quick or not. In the dry at leased you haven’t got that so I hope it’s dry. Definitely."

The conditions have also meant that not all drivers have come within the percentage bracket required by the ACO (organisers). We all expect they will have to look at their own rules here...

"I don’t see how they can enforce it for a lot of the drivers when the conditions have changed dramatically" said Dean. "You can’t get within 15 / 20% of whatever if it’s pouring with rain and the first session was dry, but it was only dry for half an hour, that means you can’t get all three drivers in the car so I’m absolutely certain they [the ACO] will take all of that into account, and they’ll look at the driver’s previous ability and results or whatever.

" If that ends up being Lawrence and I that’s on the cusp of that, I’m sure they’ll look at same car, same team 12 months on - there’s some flexibility in it. Some rules you can’t enforce.

"We were as quick as anybody just then [in qualifying 2] when we were out there so if you can do it in the pouring rain where you can’t see where you’re going, they have got to presume you can do it in the dry when you can!"