Alpine delivered the shock of Le Mans week on Wednesday evening, with Ferdinand Habsburg topping Hypercar qualifying at the Circuit de la Sarthe and sending the reigning race-winning Ferrari and both works Peugeots crashing out of Hyperpole contention.
Habsburg lapped the 13.6km circuit in 3:23.135 in the No.35 Alpine A424, the fastest time of the week so far and quicker than the pole mark set 12 months earlier. It was a late, decisive effort. In the closing two minutes the No.101 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac of Jordan Taylor had broken into the 3:23s, only for new Hertz Team JOTA recruit Louis Deletraz to go faster still in the No.12 Cadillac. Then Habsburg arrived. His lap left Deletraz second by just 0.013s, with Taylor third, putting all three Cadillacs inside the top five.
For Alpine, competing in what the manufacturer has framed as its farewell run at Le Mans with the A424, it was a statement on the eve of the 24 Hours. Habsburg played down the heroics afterwards, describing the lap as simply a great time behind the wheel rather than anything calculated.
The bigger story sat at the bottom of the 18-car timesheet. Under the format, only the fastest 15 Hypercars advance to Thursday's two Hyperpole knockout sessions; cars 16th to 18th are locked into their grid slots. The No.83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P, the car that won last year's race, was eliminated in the hands of Phil Hanson, who had an off-track moment on the approach to Tertre Rouge and lost a lap to a track-limits violation, with a second track-limits breach compounding the misery. He will start 17th, sandwiched between the two eliminated Peugeot 9X8s of the No.93 and No.94.
Both factory Ferraris barely survived, scraping through 14th and 15th. Behind Habsburg and the Cadillac trio, Rene Rast was best of the WRT BMWs in fourth, with Sebastien Bourdais fifth. There was a bright debut for Genesis: both GMR-001s of the new Magma Racing programme made the cut, Dani Juncadella and Pipo Derani qualifying 11th and 13th.
The drama spread to the support classes. In LMP2, Silver-rated Doriane Pin blitzed the field in the No.30 Duqueine Oreca with a 3:34.662, more than half a second clear, while 19-year-old Ian Aguilera put the No.37 CLX Motorsport car second. In LMGT3, Peter Dempsey led for Racing Team Turkey by TF in the Corvette Z06 GT3.R, edging the No.77 Proton Ford Mustang of Eric Powell by 0.207s. Among the casualties were both Garage 59 McLarens and, surprisingly, GT veteran Ben Keating.
The eliminations carry real weight before Saturday's start. With overtaking at a premium in the current Hypercar era, the No.83 Ferrari and the Peugeots now face the prospect of carving through traffic from deep in the field for 24 hours. Hyperpole, which decides the front of the grid, runs Thursday evening.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/habsburg-stuns-le-mans-qualifying-ferrari-peugeots-eliminated). Visit for full coverage.*
