Le Mans Series – Interlagos – Thursday Morning
Bom Dia from Sao Paulo
© Janos Wimpffen

The second day of practice (along with qualifying), begins under hazy skies. I doubt that the skies are ever clear in this teeming metropolis. There is the most vague hint of rain, as there was yesterday. However, the mid-spring here in the Southern Hemisphere has thus far proven dry.

Oliver Gavin exclaimed, “ I cannot believe that this race is taking place. Not only are there so few cars here, but the facilities are quite primitive.” After a quick perusal it is clear that Autodromo Carlos Pace would have looked somewhat dated circa 1980. The fact that there is a GP here must be another case of Bernie’s outstretched palms.

Both of the Ollies and I, along with various team members, were milling about outside the race center downtown, waiting for a shuttle to the circuit. I thought that there was some sort of issue, but they commented that this was the third day here and the third day of confusion as to sorting out rides.

As the Editor has noted, the times yesterday were much as expected. Guido Quirmbach of Projekt Le Mans reports that there were two incidents of note. Juan Barazi spun the Zytek and it ingested some gravel. The next time around a crew member noticed some debris clogging an intake and frantically called the team owner in, but the message got to him too late and the Zytek engine expired on the next lap. Also, the GPC Ferrari (Drudi aboard) and the Bruneau Pilbeam made contact. Their respective sessions ended, but all three cars should be ready today.

Sao Paulo is storied as being the largest city in the Western Hemisphere and it displays all the earmarks of a complex urban area. The highly impoverished favellas are visible up on the hillside, although a cursory peek indicates that they do not look much worse than some of the shabbier North American ghettoes. Perhaps it’s a harbinger of North America if the Yankee peso falls much further.

There is also ample wealth. I’m staying at the edge of the appropriately named Jardins Barrio, a neighborhood of endless stately homes. The sidewalks less resemble pavement than they do marble tile. The bulk of Paulistas have the look and feel of middle class folks anywhere in the world. Within Brazil, Sao Paulo is famous for being a very busy and industrious place and the hustle and bustle belies this.

S.P. is also famous for choking traffic. It is impressive how well it moves given the sheer volume. Although vehicles can rarely exceed 50 kph because of the density, there is a very intricate ballet at work, with drivers deftly weaving continually from lane to lane. The blaring of horns is a common sound throughout Spanish Latin America, but not so much among the Portuguese speakers. They seem to use it mostly as a quick warning of approach rather than as a tool of constant complaint.

The strangest sight thus far - a bicycle rider, decked out in full Tour de France gear - was slipstreaming a few centimeters behind a fume belching truck. This was in the middle lane of the motorway.

We begin today with a 90-minute free session, then a 3-hour lunch break followed by 20 minute sessions for the Prototypes and production classes, respectively. There aren’t even any support events whatsoever to add depth to the meeting. Guido was told that had all the championships been decided then the organizers would have opened up the field to local prototypes. As we still have the P1 drivers’ title in contention, this deprives foreigners from seeing the odd creatures that comprise the Brazilian Endurance Championship.

Less odd are the half-dozen or so drivers crossing from that series to the LMS for this event. The No. 75 JMB Ferrari has the father and son team of Alexandre Negrão along with Andreas Mattheis. The only Brazilian entry is the No. 91 Porsche, co-driven by regulars in the national series, Flavio Figueiredo and Marcel Visconde. They are joined by a very familiar name to sports car racing, the 1987 World Champion, Raul Boesel.

Another well-known veteran, Chico Serra, is part of the all-Brazilian crew of the No. 74 JMB Ferrari. Embassy Racing has welcomed Mario Haberfeld, who is a well-known competitor from several series.

The Radical was indeed one of the first to record a quick time today, soon eclipsed by the Pescarolo. Such is the paucity of cars that we can refer to nearly all the Prototypes as “the” this and that—only Peugeot has brought a companion. It took all of about 8 minutes before the diesels took their rightful place at the head of the field. Local knowledge certainly matters, as the GT2 class is headed by the all-Brazilian cars, the No. 74 Ferrari and the Dener (No. 91) Porsche. It seems that Senhor Boesel set the time. That factory Porsche man, Marc Lieb, then propelled the oft-overlooked No. 77 Felbermayr Porsche to the top of the GT2 charts.

GT1 would not be of much interest were it not for the presence of several pleasant chaps scattered among the two cars. Not surprisingly, the Olliemobile holds a slight edge over the Aston Martin.

It takes a good 45 minutes before the Prototypes are fully sorted so that all the four P1s sit atop all the three P2s. The No. 74 JMB Ferrari had an off but a quick inspection revealed no consequences. At least there are enough cars that one has to flip the timing screen to see the bottom dwellers—thrilling. One of the slowest cars, the No. 79 Felbermayr Porsche, suffered a right rear puncture at the start of a lap, requiring a particularly slow trip back to the pits.

Practice 3 had a brief interruption with nine minutes to go. The bonnet of the No. 85 car spiked onto the center of the front straight. It appears to have come off merely due to a loose clip. The errant Spyker and 14 other cars went back out for the last 5 minutes. The open track was particularly beneficial to Beretta, who upped the Corvette’s time, placing in amongst the P2s. The Aston also went a tad quicker (Zacchia the driver), as did Daniel Serra (son of Chico) in the JMB entry. Then on the final lap, J-C Boullion improves the Pescarolo’s time marginally, getting #16 back ahead of JC-W’s best Creation time.

With no conflicting activities, the officials allowed the session to go past the 12:00 finish, and thus make up the few minutes lost earlier. The Pescarolo and the JWA Porsche were the only teams to remain out. Truly remaining out was the Barazi Zytek which stopped out on course and was towed in.