Monza pole for Peugeot.

Minassian leads 1-2 for French squad in Italy.

Having dominated the practice sessions in Italy, Peugeot again had the edge on rivals Audi in qualifying for the second round of the Le Mans Series after Nicolas Minassian put the #7 908 HDi on pole position at Monza.

The Frenchman posted a stunning time of 1m 31.470s during the session to put himself half a second clear of the sister car of Pedro Lamy but the worrying issue for Audi will have been the gap back to the third placed car of Dindo Capello.

Indeed, the Italian's best lap of 1m 33.193s was a whopping 1.7secs away from pole position and also more than a second behind the second placed car leaving Audi with work to do if it is to end Peugeot's 100 per cent record in the series since debuting the 908 at Monza in 2007.

The second Audi, in the hands of Mike Rockenfeller, was fourth quickest ahead of the leading petrol-powered LMP1 machine, which again was the Charouz Racing Systems Lola-Aston Martin in the hands of Stefan Mucke. Although nearly a second behind the slowest diesel car, the German was easily the quickest petrol car with his best lap being 1.2secs clear of the sixth placed Courage-Oreca LC70 of former F1 racer Olivier Panis.

In LMP2, the van Merksteijn Porsche RS Spyder was once again the car to beat as Jos Verstappen outpaced a number of LMP1 machines to break into the top ten with the tenth quickest time overall.

His lap of 1m 36.842s was a second quicker than fellow Dutchman Jan Lammers managed for Horag Racing, while Casper Elgaard ensured the the RS Spyder locked out the top three places in class by going third quickest for Essex Racing.

The Speedy Sebah Lola Coupe was fourth in the hands of Andrea Belicchi while Michael Vergers' Barazi-Epsilon Zytek and Tommy Erdos' RML Lola completed the top six.

With Larbre having withdrawn from the series on the eve of the race weekend, just four cars will make up the GT1 grid in Italy with Olivier Beretta putting the #72 Luc Alphand Corvette onto pole, getting the edge over the Team Modena Aston Martin of Tomas Enge which had been the car to beat in practice. Sebastien Dumez put the second Corvette into third place with Peter Kox fourth in the IPB Spartak Lamborghini.

Despite admitting he was wary about the potential pace of the Porsche teams, defending GT2 champion Rob Bell was the pace-setter in the Virgo Motorsport Ferrari to take the GT2 class pole, although he was only two-tenths of a second clear of Alex Davison in the Felbermayr-Proton 997 RSR. Pierre Kaffer, in Farnbacher Racing's Ferrari 430, completed the top three.

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