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SEBRING, Fl — Let there be no doubt about this: the Peugeots are the dominant car here this week, turning the top times of each test session so far. But now the real business starts with qualifying this afternoon.

The Peugeots were at the top of the rung in all sessions Thursday including the evening session and in this morning’s session looked downright potent, particularly in the first turn where they seemed to be able to power through the washboardy surface.

Third fastest today was the Aston Martin works team more than a second behind the Peugeots. The other P1 car that seemed to be in the hunt with the French combo was the Drayson racing Judd-powered Lola. But in the morning session with Paul Drayson at the wheel the car spun coming out of turn 16 and wound up in the tire barrier damaging the rear end. Drayson was able to restart the car and drive it back to the pit area.

“Oh I’m ok. Most of the damage was the rear bodywork. It’s mostly cosmetic. Our biggest problem is we’ve already damaged most of the rear body work when Jonny had his incident earlier this week. We’ll have to put all our pieces together for qualifying. It was just a case of cold tires,” Drayson said of the shunt.

The GT2 class is still a dogfight waiting to happen. While the BMWs have dominated the last several sessions (and perhaps dominate is not the right word — they have consistently been quickest) this morning’s top time was posted by the Jaimie Melo in the Ferarri 430 GT — but not by much — the two BMWs were less than half a second off his pace.

In the LMP2 class, the Acura continues to be the early favorite, at least basede on speed in testing with Marino Franchitti turning in the best time in this morning’s session, as he was touching the times of the LMP1s.

To state the obvious, test times and qualifying too don’t mean a great deal in a 12 hour long race. Last year the Acura had the top time in qualifying but finished well off the winining pace of the Audi.