Qualifying 2 Halted After Maris Crash

The second qualifying session for this weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans has been halted for barrier repairs following a crash for Eurasia Motorsport driver Erik Maris on Thursday evening.

Moments before the red flag was thrown, Mike Conway managed to squeeze in a new provisional pole time of 3:18.651 in the No. 7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid, shaving a tenth of a second off co-driver Kamui Kobayashi’s lap from Wednesday night.

Maris crashed hard coming out of the first chicane on the Mulsanne Straight in the No. 33 Ligier JS P217 Gibson, hitting the barrier on the right-hand side of the circuit.

Maris was able to get out of his car unaided, but was immediately taken to the medical center under the orders of race control.

A number of vehicles were then deployed to the crash site soon after the incident so that barrier repairs could be completed, the clock frozen under the red flag with just 17 minutes of running completed.

Race control confirmed that running would not resume until repairs were completed, and that the timetable may be subject to change.

That's a lotta equipment!! Gonna be awhile under 🔴 flag. 😞 pic.twitter.com/UZ3TljpBUP

— Erin Cechal (@ErinCechal) June 15, 2017

Once the repairs were completed, Qualifying 2 resumed at 8:08 p.m. local time and will run until 9:30 p.m., 30 minutes longer than initially scheduled in a bid to make up for some of the lost time. Q3 is still due to start at 10 p.m. as planned.