shell of a TWR-designed Jaguar XJR-14 racing car, modified to an open top design by Tom Walkinshaw Racing, and fitted with the Porsche 962 engine. Three IMSA-WSC cars turned up: two Ferrari 333 SP's run by Scandia Racing versus the much-improved Riley & Scott (winner of the Daytona and Sebring enduros). In another small LM P2 field of four cars, Welter and Bonnet were joined by a Kudzu-Mazda stepping across from WSC and now run directly by the Mazdaspeed works team. In GT1, defending champions McLaren-BMW had updated 1996-spec cars, with tighter air restrictors dropping the power output slightly. This time they included a pair run as a BMW works team (through their Italian partners Bigazzi). The McLarens were joined again by Nissan, Toyota and Lister (now sponsored by Newcastle United Football Club). Chrysler-Dodge returned with a quartet of Vipers with their big rumbling 8-litre engines; one pair run by ORECA in the BPR and the second pair by Canaska-Southwind in the North American series. But, perhaps as might be expected, the big news was with Porsche and the new 911 GT1 - yet again courting controversy. This was, quite literally, virtually a Porsche 911 in name only, with the visual similarity of a squashed, lengthened 911. This was Porsche's first ever mid-engined car, using a purpose-designed 3.2L flat-six, twin-turbo, water-cooled (another first for Porsche) engine. The first chassis was ready in March, and with only two road-going cars it got EU GT1 homologation (again, like the Dauer-Porsche of '94, using the "promised-production" clause). Qualification The fastest practice times this year were being done by the prototypes. In the first instance Eric van der Poele, this year in the Scandia Ferrari, set the initial pace. But it was Pierluigi Martini (just out of F1) who set the pole in his Joest TWR-Porsche, just a tenth of a second ahead of the Courage of Jérôme Policand. Van der Poele was third ahead of the 911 GT1s of Wendlinger and Wollek, and Taylor in the Riley & Scott. In a novel change this year the ACO decided to line up the first dozen cars on the grid with the six fastest cars from each category two-by-two - prototypes on the left and GT cars on the right. With only a second between the first five cars this was not as skewed as might have seemed, giving further credence to the equivalency regulations.