Le Mans (France), Jun 21 (IANS): Indian racing driver Karun Chandhok and his team Murphy Prototypes qualified seventh at the La Sarthe circuit in the LMP2 category in the Le Mans 24 hours.
Murphy Prototypes set a time of 3:41.569 Thursday and will start in 15th place overall, and seventh in their category. The trio of Brendon Hartley, Mark Patterson and Chandhok will drive the iconic race in the LMP2 Nissan V8-powered Oreca 03.
The second qualifying session was wet, which resulted in Murphy Prototypes not venturing out at all.
The third and final qualifying session started on a damp but drying track. There were as many as nine red flags which disrupted running for all drivers resulting in the track coming alive in the last 30 minutes with everyone looking to improve their time.
Hartley ran in the qualifying session as he had not got any meaningful running the entire week. He finally managed to get a new set of tyres to run in qualifying.
Chandhok is looking forward to a one-day break before the race starts Saturday evening.
"The morning session was a complete washout and it made no sense to do any laps. With the weather and so many red flags I could not get any running today but will be back in the car for warm-up tomorrow, said the 29-year-old.
"We are starting in a reasonably good position and will have to push very hard to get a good result. The atmosphere here is unbelievable and I can't wait to get going on Saturday. I am a little more experienced after racing last year but conditions are a lot more unpredictable this year so should be an interesting race."
Hartley was happy to get a run finally even though there were some problems to iron out before the race.
"We could have been much better, but it’s qualifying for a 24-hour race. We had some issue with the steering rack. We are P7 so it is not a big deal but with such a long race tomorrow we have a little issue to fix, but we’re in good shape,” said Hartley.
Team principal Greg Murphy felt the LMP2 category will be one of the most closely contested and felt the team could have got more running time.
“We were pretty disappointed to be honest. Every time we went for a lap we got traffic, we got red flags. I’m sure it’s a common story up and down the pitlane but we really struggled. But seventh position, we’re reasonable happy. We’re here to fight and we’re here to win so I think we have some good speed in the car," said Murphy.