Graff Oreca Loses LMP2 Pole

The Graff Oreca 07 Gibson has been stripped of its LMP2 pole position for the 24 Hours of Le Mans after being found guilty of a post-qualifying infringement.

Vincent Capillaire failed to stop at the scrutineering light to weigh-in the car, which led to all of the car’s times from Wednesday night’s third qualifying session being deleted.

This covered the time of 3:25.073 set by Tristan Gommendy earlier in the session, which was the fastest LMP2 lap across the three qualifying segments.

The deletion of the Graff time means that the No. 28 TDS Racing Oreca will now start from the pole, based on Loic Duval’s 3:25.343 which was originally the second-best effort.

TDS will share the front row of the grid with the No. 31 DragonSpeed Oreca qualified by Pastor Maldonado, ahead of the Oreca-based entries from Signatech Alpine, IDEC Sport and G-Drive Racing.

The best of the non-Oreca entries – the No. 22 Ligier JS P217 Gibson run by United Autosports – will line up in the fifth spot.

Graff will now start from 14th on the class grid, based on its best time from across the first two qualifying sessions.