The pole shootout for the fourth round of the 2024 World Endurance Championship did not begin as scheduled at 8pm local time, with the race control subsequently communicating 8:30pm as the new start time.
The Hyperpole session was further pushed forward to 8:35pm, as the work continued on replacing the armco barriers between Mulsanne and Indianapolis.
The first of the two contests for the weekend was red-flagged with about 15 minutes left on the clock when Graff driver Louis Rossi heavily crashed his #9 Ligier JS P320 LMP3 car.
Rossi was able to get out of the car on his own, but both his car and the barriers sustained heavy damage in the contact.
No replays of the incident were shown and it remains clear if a technical problem was to blame for the crash. An accident with another car can also not be ruled out.
#83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Robert Kubica, Robert Shwartzman, Yifei Ye
Photo by: Rainier Ehrhardt
Eight cars from each of the three classes are due to take part in Hyperpole, which will decide how they will line up on the grid for the 92th running of the French endurance classic.
However, only seven vehicles will effectively be contending for pole position in Hypercar, with Jota sitting out the session as it rebuilds its #12 Porsche 963 around a new chassis.
The British team only got through into Q2 after Kamui Kobayashi lost all his laps in the #7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid for causing a red flag. But Callum Ilott then suffered a crash of his own in night practice later on Wednesday, wrecking the Porsche tub beyond repair.
Dries Vanthoor had topped the opening segment of the qualifying in the #15 BMW M Hybrid V8, leading the #3 Cadillac V-Series.R of Sebastien Bourdais.
Malthe Jakobsen put the #37 Cool Racing ORECA-Gibson 07 on top in the LMP2 class, while the new LMGT3 division was led by Ben Barker in the #77 Proton Ford Mustang GT3.