Automatic entries Eight automatic entry invitations were earned by teams that won their class in the 2001 24 Hours of Le Mans, or victories in two rounds of the worldwide Le Mans Series that the ACO designed as "qualifying events" – the Petit Le Mans of the American Le Mans Series and the 1000km of Estoril of the defunct European Le Mans Series. They were Audi Sport Team Joest in the LMP900 class, Corvette Racing in the LMGTs category and Seikel Motorsport in the LMGT class. Audi and Corvette also earned berths for securing victories in their respective classes at the Petit Le Mans race and Pescarolo Sport of the LMP900 category, GTS entrants Ray Mallock Limited and Freisinger Motorsport in the LMGT class were granted invitations for winning the 1000 km of Estoril. Prototype Technology Group were the only team not to accept their automatic invitation as the team's car supplier BMW had withdrawn from the American Le Mans Series due to a technological dispute. Entry list and reserves On 21 March 2002, the selection committee of the ACO announced the full 50-car entry list for Le Mans, plus six reserves. In addition from the eight guaranteed entries, 17 regular season entries came from the American Le Mans Series, while the remainder of the field was filled with one-off entries only competing at Le Mans. Team Rafanelli announced that their Ferrari 550M would be withdrawn on 26 March, after the team decided to focus on the GTS championship in the American Le Mans Series. This promoted the 27 Chamberlain Motorsport MG-Lola EX257 to the race entry as a result and increased the number of LMP675 entries to seven. All of the reserve entries were deleted from the entry list on 31 May. Testing A mandatory pre-Le Mans testing day split into two daytime sessions of four hours each was held at the circuit on 5 May, involving all 48 entries as well as all six reserve cars. The two four-hour sessions were held in cold and overcast weather conditions. Audi set the day's pace with a lap of 3 minutes and 30.296 seconds from the No. 2 Audi R8 of Rinaldo Capello in the final ten minutes of the second session, followed by Stéphane Sarrazin in the No. 14 Team Oreca Dallara SP1 in second. Slower traffic restricted Tom Kristensen's No. 1 car to third and his teammate Michael