Asian Le Mans/ILMC, Zhuhai – FP1 Notes
Peugeot Sets The Pace In The Wet

Despite initial impressions, the track was a long way from being dry for the first of the day’s two free practice sessions and stocks of slick tyres were in no danger of being depleted during the morning at least.

Four cars sat out the session – the Drayson Racing and Tokai University P1s, the JLOC Lambo and the RSR Jaguar. While the Courage Oreca’s absence was owing to the car’s being rebuilt after its heavy shunt on Thursday, RSR’s John Gentilozzi – an engineer with the team, and son of Paul – probably spoke for the three other teams when he explained the reason for the XKRS’s absence; “We already know how to repair bodywork!” he began.

“There’s nothing to be gained in a downpour, and even though it perhaps wasn’t as wet as we expected this morning, we’d already committed to not going out. The race is likely to be dry and we were happy with our dry set-up yesterday, so we don’t think it’s worth trying to find a big set-up for the wet.

“The guys have said that the track is like an ice rink wherever there is any rain on the kerbs, and the guys next door [Tokai] showed what can happen when you go off here. We’ll go out in the morning if we’re going to need a wet set-up for qualifying, but unless we see a reasonably dry line appearing in this afternoon’s session, we’ll be skipping that one as well.”

Paul Drayson confirmed that his Lola would be out for the afternoon session, while the Tokai car should be back out on Saturday.

The remaining 19 cars were all out on track within ten minutes of the start of the session, with the #2 Peugeot heading the times in the early running on 1:31.404.

Just past quarter distance, however, Romain Dumas improved to 1:30.671 in the #8 Audi, not long after a stop for adjustments to the rear. Five minutes later, Sébastien Bourdais started to change the sector times to white and three fastest sectors combined to lower the laptime to 1:28.751 and left the #1 908 at the top of the list. This time wasn’t to be bettered.

By the end of the session, the two Audis were the filling in a Peugeot sandwich, with almost two and a half seconds separating the two French cars.

Phil Quaife was enjoying his Chinese debut in the #90 CRS Racing Ferrari 430; “The car feels good and we’ve been running in the top two or three so far.” So what tyres was he running? “We opted for the Type-R, which is one step up from inters, but one step down from full wets. With the conditions as they were at the end of the session we would have switched to full wets, had we gone out again.”

The #77 Porsche of Team Felbermayr-Proton headed the GT2 class, just a few hundredths ahead of the CRS Ferrari, with the #95 AF Corse 430 a third of a second further back in third.

The #75 ProSpeed Competition RSR didn’t have a happy session; slowing on track after 16 minutes and only re-emerging near the end to improve to within a tenth of the Team Schnitzer BMW. “Driveshaft!” said Richard Westbrook. “The bigger problem for us is that we didn’t go out on Thursday and that now looks like being the only dry running we’ll get before the race. Darryl O’Young told me that he’s been coming here for eight years and it’s never rained!

“Normally, the three hours of official running we get would be enough to get sorted for the race; but while the track isn’t difficult to learn for the drivers, the team is going to be compromised on the set up if it is dry on Sunday.”

Danny Watts was happy to finally be behind the wheel of the United Autosports Audi R8, but was having to adjust to his new surroundings; “It’s so different from the [Strakka HPD] to drive that it’s taking some getting used to; and it’s very strange going from one of the fastest to one of the slower cars in the field.

"At least I’ve got a roof over my head here and I haven’t got to worry about my visor misting up!” The KK Performance Audi was fastest in GTC, with the two United R8s second and third.  

MH