LE MANS, France — The Peugeot Team, perhaps not to the surprise of anyone who has been watching the sport this year, threw down a challenge to the rest of the world and in particular the Audi Team during qualifying today as it took the top three qualifying spots — and it was not even close for fourth place as the quickest Audi was four seconds behind the third fastest Peugeot and nearly six seconds off the pace of the top qualifying Peugeot (Lamy, Sarrazkin, and Wurz, A.).

Of course the Peugeot was fast last year as well as both of the Peugeot cars topped qualifying but were unable to translate their speed into a win as the vaunted Audis jumped the French team at the start of the 75th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans to win for a seventh time in eight years.

However, this year the Peugeot is wiser and they have had another year of R & D on their car with results to show for their effort at early season endurance events — and even when they tripped on their proverbial cape at Sebring, showed enough speed to impress many that 2008 would see the changing of the guard.

In addition, each of the Peugeots were considerably faster than their times in the test sessions earlier in this Le Mans season — and by a substantial amount of time — four seconds. The Audis on the other hand qualified at around the same time that they ran in the early test session. If the French are trying to mess with the German’s head, they are doing a pretty good job of it.

Or are they? It will be interesting to see how this race within a race plays out over the next four days.

In the LM P2 division it was Team Essex in a Porsche RS Spyder capturing the top time while Porsche also captured the top time in the LM GT2 class as well.

In the LM GT1 class it was the Corvette Team coming back with a vegence after being vanquished last year by the Aston Martin team. The second place team of last year in the GT1 class of Fellows, OConnell, and Magnussen took honors and a Corvette also held down the second position among the GT1 cars. The fastest Aston Martin timed in at fifth place in GT1.

And speaking of Aston Martin, their car in the LM P1 division, a Lola chassied vehicle of Charouz Racing System finished 12th in qualifying 13 seconds and change off the pace set by the Peugeots.