It's down to the wire at the last round of the 2009 Le Mans Series. The LMP1 championship has been thrown open this year, with the diesel Peugeot 908s only competing for a part-season and the non-appearance of the factory Audi R15s. The #007 Lola-Aston Martin crew is on course to win, with a seven point advantage in the drivers' championship over the #16 Pescarolo and then the #009 sister Aston only just behind and gunning for second. LMP2 is already decided, with the on-form Olivier Pla helming the Quifel-ASM Ginetta-Zytek team. The final year of current GT1s is going out with a fizzle rather than a bang: just three cars take the start and the Luc Alphand Aventures Corvette C6.R already has the championship in the bag. GT2 will likely throw up the usual close battle, but there are only two cars in with a chance: the Febelmayr Porsche 997 of Lieb/Lietz and the JMW Bell/Bruni Ferrari 430 – the latter looking for back-to-back championship titles but really needing bad luck to hit Febelmayr to be in with a shot. 

MIrroring the championship, Aston Martin Racing battled with Pescarolo over the three practice sessions at Silverstone on Friday and Saturday. Although the #16 headed two of the three sessions, the solo #10 Oreca along with both the #007 and #009 Astons beat the Pesca's previous times in the third and final session. Into qualifying itself where pole means an extra point, and first the GT1 and GT2 teams took to the track for their 20 minute session – though there was little action in the first 10 minutes. But despite only three cars, how's this for closeness in GT1: the Larbre Saleen ended up at the front with a 1:45.714, followed by the Gigawave Aston Martin 7/100s behind and then the Alphand C6.R only another tenth of a second back! Let's hope all three last the race to make a fight of it. 

In GT2 the Febelmayr pair just squeezed out the JMW Ferrari by a mere tenth with a 1:48.638, meaning they need a single point to clinch the GT2 drivers' championship tomorrow. The IMSA Porsche was right on their tail, followed by the Modena Ferrari with one of a trio of Mansells on duty this weekend: Nigel's son, Leo Mansell.

Finally, the LMP1 and LMP2s went out: this time it was even later in the session that the cars really put flying laps in: two spins for the #15 Kolles Audi causing yellow flags just as the session was getting going. Lapierre in the Oreca banged in a 1:32.798 at this point – this would stand as pole as – more seriously for the championship – Bouillon put the Pescarolo into the barriers at Becketts with just minutes left on the clock and with no time set by the car up to that point. The yellows then killed any chance of faster laps being set in the dying minutes, so the grid was set. 1992 F1 and 1993 CART champion Nigel Mansell had commandeered the LNT Ginetta-Zytek this weekend, along with his other son Greg and LNT team boss Laurence Tomlinson, and were more than happy to achieve fifth fastest time. Not bad for an old bloke! Olivier Pla in the ASM car set a 1:36.092 for the LMP2 pole, again in the mid-part of the session. The Lola Coupé of Speedy Sebah was over a second back, closely followed by the similar RML car, which is desperate for a good result after a terrible run of poor reliability. 

Following the LMS quallies was the Classic Endurance race, featuring almost 50 amazing prototypes and sportscars from the 70s and 80s. Bobby Rahal raced the 1972 Lola T290 that he drove in period – and won with it! 

The aero upgrades for the Oreca team have obviously worked – this bodes well for their upcoming forays to America for Petit Le Mans and Laguna Seca, plus the Asian Le Mans race at Okayama in Japan in November. A battle royale is in store on Sunday when the 40-car grid heads into Copse for the first time – 195 laps around the fantastically fast Silverstone track, and Speedhunters will be there to cover it.

LMS ROUND 5 QUALIFYING

LMP1

1st: #10 Team Oreca Matmut/AIM Courage-Oreca LC70-AIM (Olivier Panis/Nicolas Lapierre) 1:32.798

2nd: #007 Aston Martin Racing Lola-Aston Martin (Jan Charouz/Stefan Mücke/Tomas Enge) 1:33.714

3rd: #009 Aston Martin Racing Lola-Aston Martin (Harold Primat/Darren Turner) 1:34.618

4th: #13 Speedy Racing Team Sebah Lola B06/80 Coupé-Aston Martin (Andrea Belicchi/Nicolas Prost/Marcel Fassler) 1:34.654

5th: #5 Team LNT Ginetta-Zytek GZ09S-Zytek (Lawrence Tomlinson/Nigel Mansell/Greg Mansell) 1:35.296

LMP2 TOP FIVE

8th: #40 Quifel-ASM Team Ginetta-Zytek 09S-Zytek (Miguel Amaral/Olivier Pla) 1:36.092

10th: #33 Speedy Racing Team Sebah Lola B08/80 Coupe-Judd (Xavier Pompidou/Jonny Kane/Benjamin Leuenberger) 1:37.128

11th: #25 RML Lola B08/80 Coupé-Mazda (Tommy Erdos/Mike Newton) 1:37.280

12th: #41 G.A.C. Racing Team Zytek 07S (Karim Oijeh/Claude-Yves Gosselin/Philipp Peter) 1:38.210

13th: #45 Team WFR WF01-Zytek (Warren Hughes/Jody Firth/Darren Manning) 1:38.810

GT1 TOP THREE

21st: #50 Larbre Competition Saleen S7R-Ford (Roland Berville/Sébastien Dumez/Laurent Groppi) 1:45.714

22nd: #60 Gigawave Motorsport Aston Martin DBR9 (Ryan Sharp/Peter Kox) 1:45.796

23rd: #72 Luc Alphand Aventures Corvette C6.R (Julien Jousse/Patrice Goueslard/Yann Clairay) 1:45.848

GT2 TOP FIVE

24th: #77 Team Felbermayr Proton Porsche 997 GT3RSR (Richard Lietz/Marc Lieb/Horst Felbermayr Sr) 1:48.638

25th: #92 JMW Motorsport Ferrari F430GT (Rob Bell/Gianmaria Bruni) 1:48.830

26th: #76 IMSA Performance Matmut Porsche 997 GT3RSR (Raymond Narac/Patrick Pilet) 1:48.984

27th: #84 Team Modena Ferrari F430GT (Antonio Garcia/Leo Mansell/Jaime Melo) 1:49.358

28th: #89 Hankook-Team Farnbacher Ferrari F430GT (Christian Montanari/Pierre Kaffer) 1:49.570

Jonathan Moore

Le Mans Series

Silverstone