Strong qualifying puts us in hunt to savour 24 Hours of Le Mans delight, insists Charlie Eastwood

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Belfast's Charlie Eastwood believes a solid qualifying outcome for the No.81 Corvette Z06 GT3.R has given its crew a fighting chance of causing an upset at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Eastwood and team-mates Rui Andrade and Tom Van Rompuy picked up the pace when it really mattered ahead of the marathon event in France and will start from the third row of the grid.

Although they still have some work to do, particularly in respect of extracting extra speed from their TF Sport-run machine around the 8.467-mile Circuit de la Sarthe, the trio are in the ballpark in the build-up to the biggest motorsport meeting on the calendar.

In Thursday's two-stage Hyperpole session, Eastwood successfully advanced out of the 12-car field with the second-fastest time, recording a 3:54.646 lap, which was followed by Andrade's career-best GT time at Le Mans - a 3:55.740 effort - on his final circuit to stay in sixth spot.

From there, the yellow and black car has a decent chance of climbing up through the field during the opening exchanges of the race, which is due to get under way at 3pm BST.

Starting ahead of them is the pole-sitting Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage, the No.21 factory AF Corse Ferrari 296 and the No.46 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 Evo thanks to a superb lap by the former MotoGP race winner and title holder Valentino Rossi.

A strong result would also help reignite Eastwood's FIA World Endurance Championship campaign as Le Mans offers two sets of points scoring opportunities across the 24 hours.

"Clearly, the top couple of cars are super-fast, but we have not been the sixth-fastest car since we've been here all week. I think all three of us did a really good job," reflected Eastwood, who triumphed in his class in 2020 when he was part of the Aston Martin Racing family.

"We are not the fastest, but we are definitely not the slowest - we are in the mix for sure and I feel that we can definitely fight from sixth on the grid come race day.

"The Corvette and the team have been super-faultless.

"We have been tuning the car more and more to a good place.

"As we have in the last couple of races, we have executed really well up to now. We just need to make sure we continue to execute this weekend as well."