Sarrazin magic demotes McNish

The first of those was caused by Jean de Pourtales, who crashed the Kruse Schiller Motorsport Lola Mazda.Pourtales was unhurt, but the accident caused heavy front-end damage.

Shortly afterwards it was the turn of Olivier Pla to crash the Quifel-ASM team Lola. The accident caused heavy damage to the right side of the Lola, and the LMP2 Porsche of Didier Theys was lucky not to also become involved in the accident.

McNish had set his best time early in the session, before the firstrst red flag and so was able to sit out the rest of qualifying, saving the tyres on which he must start tomorrow's race. The

Scotsman set a time of 1m58.705s, fastest in the opening section of qualifying ahead of his team-mate Mike Rockenfeller.

Following the two red flags, the clock was re-set to six minutes, long enough for Sarrazin to snatch pole position and Marc Gene to launch his own attack on the Audis. Though the Spaniard was able to better Rockenfeller's time, despite suffering from oversteer, he was eight-hundredths of a second slower than McNish and will line up on the second row.

The Lola Aston Martin was qualified by Stefan Mucke and the German, who will share the car with Czech driver Jan Charouz was demoted to fifth by the battling diesels.

Robbie Kerr managed only 11th fastest time in the Creation having gone off track in the final run to the flag.