2024 Le Mans 24 Hours full starting grid: Porsche on pole

Le Mans News

June 14th 2024 - Last updated: June 15th 2024

Kevin Estre in the No6 Porsche will start on pole for this weekend's Le Mans 24 Hours. Here's the full grid that will line up behind him, including results from the LMP2 and LMGT3 categories

Porsche will start from the front, but will it stay there?

Porsche

Author

Motor Sport

Porsche will start on pole for the 2024 Le Mans 24 Hours after a last gasp lap knocked Cadillac off the top perch in Thursday’s hyperpole shootout. Keep reading for more on hyperpole or click below for the full entry list.

Le Mans entry list

While BMW topped the first qualifying session on Wednesday, the team’s luck ran out in hyperpole when Dries Vanthoor, in the No15 BMW crashed at Indianapolis, stopping the session. It was unfortunate too for Antonio Fuoco who looked on course for a pole-worthy lap when the red flags came out.

At that point, Cadillac’s Sébastien Bourdais was topping the timesheets. With an empty tank and no refuelling allowed, he got out of his No3 car to the congratulations of his team.

The remaining contenders were lining up in the pitlane, however, with more than seven minutes on the clock.

It proved enough for Alex Lynn in the No2 sister Cadillac to beat Bourdais’ lap by just four-hundredths of a second with a kerb, and then, in the very final time set in the session, Kevin Estre in the No6 Porsche went 0.148sec faster to claim pole for the pre-race favourites with a kerb crashing, wheel-sliding all-out effort. It came after a disappointing race for the Porsche 963 runners in 2023.

“An amazing feeling to stand on pole in Le Mans,” said Estre. “The team gave me a mega car.

“It was very stressful, we didn’t have much fuel to do many laps.

“I’m really proud to be a part of this team and what we’ve achieved and what we improved compared to last year. But that’s just the beginning. There is one big day on Saturday and Sunday.”

Porsche Le Mans Pole — A banzai lap put Porsche on the front row

Porsche

Bourdais said he was happy with his effort and the No3 Cadillac will start alongside No6 Porsche on Saturday afternoon, due to a five-place grid penalty for the No2 Cadillac; the result of a crash in the last World Endurance Championship round at Spa.

Both Ferraris had times within a second of Estre and will start on the second row, followed by the No35 Alpine and then the demoted Cadillac.

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As Toyota’s Kamui Kobayashi found in Wednesday’s session, triggering a red flag results in all lap times being deleted, so the No15 BMW will start in sixth, ahead of the penalised Cadillac and the No12 Porsche, run by Jota which had to be frantically rebuilt after Callum Ilott crashed it in practice on Wednesday night.

Louis Delétraz will start at the front of the LMP2 pack after a battle for class pole between his No14 AP by TF car and the No28 IDEC Sport car of Job Van Uitert — the pair separated by 0.6sec.

Five different manufacturers occupy the first five places on the LMGT3 grid which looks as closely competitive as the other three categories.

Brendan Iribe’s No70 McLaren, run by Inception Racing ended Hyperpole at the head of the field, eight-tenths ahead of the No92 Porsche 911 of Manthey Racing. Behind them lie a Ferrari 296, Ford Mustang and Aston Martin Vantage.