Qualifying for the 2026 Le Mans 24 Hours came to a dramatic close in the final Hyperpole session as the fastest time of the night was deleted, promoting BMW’s No15 to pole position for this weekend’s race.

Cadillac had looked set to take a second consecutive pole, as Jack Aitken, in the No38 Jota car crossed the line five-thousandths of a second faster than BMW’s Dries Vanthoor, but his best lap time was deleted over a technicality — the car had joined the fast lane in the pits too early.

However, its pace was underlined by the team’s No12 car which qualified second, ahead of Alpine‘s No35 entry.

Aitken had been poised to ruing the day for BMW, which had led most of the 15-minute Hyperpole 2 session, which also saw a strong showing by Alpine.

“That is a great surprise!” said BMW team principal Vincent Vosse. “I am very happy to be on pole position for the first time in Hypercar. I take that, of course, but at the same time congratulations to Cadillac and Jack Aitken for putting on a great show!”

From a bullish Aitken’s perspective, the penalty was “unfortunate” but he was looking forward to the show continuing on Saturday afternoon.

“It was very enjoyable for the 20 minutes that I had the pole,” he joked. “It does show that we had fantastic pace to be quickest, third quickest and three cadilalcs in the Hyperpole 2.

“Even if we don’t get to start in pole, we’re still going to work our way through on the weekend .”

Scroll down or click here to see how the grid of 62 cars will look at the rolling start, ahead of the 93rd running of the Le Mans 24 Hours, which starts at 3pm BST on Saturday.

In stark contrast to the trio of Cadillacs in Hyperpole 2, as well as two from newcomers Genesis,  only one Ferrari remained in the final-ten shootout.

Ferrari’s 499P may have won for the last three years, but the No51 car was 2.5sec off the pace, and will start eighth.

Last year’s winning No83 car wasn’t even in action during Thursday’s qualifying sessions, having been knocked out in the first qualifying session on Wednesday.

Driver comments released by Ferrari’s press office were notably downbeat.

“The Hyperpole was not memorable for us,” said Miguel Molina whose No50 car was knocked out in the first Hyperpole 1 session with 15 cars. “We know that the 24 Hours will be a very long race with many variables to take into account. We will try to perfectly execute everything that is under our control and then we will see what the result will be.”