No.35 Alpine heads Hypercar Qualifying as 2025 winners, both Peugeot cars, are eliminated from 24 Hours of Le Mans Hyperpole

Credit: Alpine

Ferdinand Habsburg led the way for the 24 Hours of Le Mans Hypercar Qualifying session, which produced a shock elimination from Hyperpole.

The Hypercar Qualifying session for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, provided us with an Alpine on top and an astonishing elimination, as last year's winning car, the No.83 AF Corse Ferrari, found itself out of Hyperpole contention.

As it happened

After the 30-minute joint LMP2 and LMGT3 Qualifying session, all 18 Hypercars entered the Circuit de la Sarthe, with 15 places for the all important Hyperpole sessions up for grabs, with cars from 16th to 18th maintaining their starting position for the 24 Hour race

As are the rules, no driver can participate in more than one Qualifying session, meaning all drivers that took part today, will be onlookers for Hyperpole 1 & 2.

The first car that crossed the line to set a competitive time, was the No.20 BMW of René Rast, with a time of 3:25.094, which was quickly beaten though, first by the No.12 Hertz Team Jota Cadillac of Louis Delétraz who set a time of 3:24.794 and then by Tom Gamble in the No.007 Aston Martin who set the early benchmark with a 3:24.163.

Meanwhile both the No.50 and the No.93 Ferrari lost their first lap time for track limits violations, whilst Stoffel Vandoorne in the No.93 Peugeot and Frédéric Makowiecki in the No.36 Alpine did not attempt a quick first lap, both 15+ seconds off the pace.

Right after the half-way mark the Top 4 cars, them being the two Aston Martins of Gamble and the No.009 of Alex Riberas, the Cadillac of Delétraz and the BMW of Rast, were covered by only one tenth of a second, while the three cars sitting on the brink of elimination, were the No.19 Genesis Magma Racing of Dani Juncadella, the No.83 AF Corse Ferrari of Phil Hanson and the No.94 Peugeot of Malthe Jakobsen.

Credit: DPPI/FIA WEC

Some teams switched their cars to the medium tyre compound during that period, with the No.8 Toyota of Sébastien Buemi, setting the fourth fastest time time, ony 0.001 faster than Rast's BMW.

With less than 10 minutes to go then, all cars were on track with fresh tyres, trying to secure their place in Thursday's Hyperpole sessions. Times started tumbling, with Gamble's prior benchmark beaten by Rast and then by a spectacular effort, made by the No.101 WTR Cadillac of Jordan Taylor.

He however would not end up in first, as he was subsequently beaten by Deletraz, who then narrowly ended up second, behind a stunning effort by Ferdinand Habsburg in the No.35 Alpine who topped the session, with a time of 3:23.135.

However the most shocking result was not that. Instead it was found way down the field, as last year's winning No.83 AF Corse Ferrari, was eliminated in the hands of Phil Hansen, who made a decent number of mistakes during the session, with the car now having to start in 17th, sandwiched by the two Peugeot entries who were also eliminated.

Drop zone - Hypercar

16th No.93 Peugeot

17th No.83 AF Corse Ferrari

18th No.94 Peugeot