Honda LCR rider Carlos Checa was in top form at Le Mans today, qualifying in third position on the front row of the grid for the French Grand Prix. The flying Spaniard confirmed his pre-event prediction that his Honda RC212V would be competitive at Le Mans, one of his favourite tracks.

More importantly, Checa feels he has a fast race set-up after a string of impressive laps in practice. He has twice finished second here, and is aiming for another podium tomorrow. For much of the final 15 minutes of the qualifying session, Checa held provisional pole but was unable to challenge pole winner Colin Edwards when he struck traffic on his third, and final, qualifying tyre run. He missed pole by just 0.249s in sunny and warm conditions.

CHECA: Third - 1’33.859

CHECA: “This is a very important front row, especially at this track, and I feel I am ready to fight for a strong result in the race. Plus I have a very good pace on race tyres. When I set the fastest time on my first qualifying tyre I thought, ?OK, I want to fight for pole, but then on my final run I hit traffic and then lost the front-end in turn 4 because the brakes and tyre were cold. I feel this pace and position should be normal for us, but it has not been possible to have the speed to show this at past two races”.

Irish rookie Eugene Laverty was also in top form with a dramatic improvement of 1.6s in final qualifying. He will start 19th on the gird.

LAVERTY: “I am really happy. I tried a different Dunlop front tyre this morning and combined with a better front-end set-up for braking I made a big step. It’s tight and narrow here, I need a good start, but I am aiming to score points”.