Race and classic pictures

Everyone ready for Le Mans?

Today sees the start of the 2017 Le Mans 24 Hours race, and everyone's getting ready for what should be a thrilling race.

A brilliant qualifying lap from Toyota's Kamui Kobayashi smashed the pole record for the event by two seconds. The Japanese driver previously raced in Formula 1 between 2009 and 2012 for Toyota and Sauber, making 75 starts in all.

Today's Picture of the Day shows Kobayashi watching the Saturday morning warm-up in the Toyota garage. He's sitting alongside another Formula 1 alumni, Anthony Davidson, who is one of the drivers of the sister car. The pair will line-up on the front row of the grid for the start of the race at 3pm local time.

Throwing the flag for the start of the race will be new Formula 1 boss Chase Carey. Among other drivers taking part in the race will be Rubens Barrichello, as well as many other sportscar drivers and stars from Formula E and IndyCar.

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Gallery: All the pictures from Montreal

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.