“Wednesday evening was slightly unusual this year as we saw many cars go for fast times straight away in the first qualifying session,” said Bazelin.

“Over Wednesday and Thursday there are three qualifying sessions – two at night  - on Wednesday and Thursday evening and one on Thursday afternoon.

“If the weather is expected to be very constant from one day to the next then we would see that the fastest times would come at the end of the Thursday afternoon session, or at the beginning of the Thursday evening session.

“On Wednesday, however, there was the expectation of possible rain on the following day so many teams changed their strategy to get quick laps early.

“For Dunlop we saw the fastest lap times in class in the GTE Pro category with the BMW team and the #56 M3 GT, so if the weather did turn out wet for Thursday’s running then this team had this safety cushion.

“In LMP2 we had the second fastest lap with the #26 Signatech Nissan, whilst in LMP1 we were still evaluating several the tyres for multiple stints and none of our teams really went for a pure performance lap.”

After the first sessions running, there was a lot of talk of a dirty track surface, and a general lack of grip.

“Every year drivers talk about the lack of grip on the first day of running at Le Mans, no matter what the car and what the tyres,” explains Bazelin.

“Then you find, as teams refine their set-ups as they seek to find the best way to exploit their tyres, that the comments from the drivers change.

“At the end of Thursday night’s running, some will still say there is no grip at all, others will be going quicker and happy that they have found the correct set-ups with their cars.

“For sure, the track surface does improve as race cars run over it, but there are also improvements from the car set-ups and also the drivers so it is difficult to say if the circuit was especially dirtier when running started yesterday.

“What we can say from Wednesday’s running is that there was more rubber remaining on the closed race course section of the circuit as there has been so little rain this year.”