The track had dried up considerably by the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia race that finished moments before GT1-GT2-GTC qualifying began. It was won by a driver from the very far west of Asia, near Copenhagen, by the name of Allan Simonsen. The Dane was sitting at home on Wednesday enjoying an Aquavit when he got the call to come - buying a plane ticket and getting a visa in the space of four hours.

Qualifying was still a tad wet with Jörg Müller getting a bit squirrelly as he got the BMW up to speed. This allowed none other than Mathias Beche to take the spot with the otherwise extremely slow Aston Martin. Müller then did nip past, almost coming to grief with one of the United Autosports Audis.

Next on top was Pedro Lamy in the Saleen. Then came perhaps the biggest surprise of the session as Danny Watts took not only top spot in the GTC class, but fastest among all the production based cars (indeed fastest thus far as the Prototypes come out later). He was on cut-slicks, as were most of the early runners (or on inters). About midway through the session several cars stopped for full slicks.

Things became somewhat normal when Yuhi Sekiguchi ran a 1:33.516 in the JLOC Lamborghini; the lap times showing that we were back to the dry times of Thursday. Tops in GT2, but strangely only GT2, was Gimmi Bruni in the # 95 AF Corse Ferrari; the Italian having usurped Muller’s time about 10 minutes into the session. While that may not be a great surprise, the fact that his lead over the usual top cars in the class was substantial, was a bit unique. Andrew Kirkaldy was about a half second behind with the #90 CR Scuderia Ferrari and then came one of the class’ powerhouses, the Felbermayr Porsche of Richard Lietz.

There was a bit of last lap fireworks with Lamy going back to fourth overall after a lackluster middle period with the Saleen. It was only at the end that the Hybrid was plugged and Jörg Bergmeister ran a 1:33.8. Then came the biggest surprise thus far; Alex Yoong ran quicker than Watts’ Audi, thus topping all but one GT1 and the GTH entry. He was on slicks, which is only part of the story. The other part is that you had a group of effectively FIA GT3 cars (called GTC here) usurping ACO spec GT2 cars—hmmm. The #98 KK Motorsport Audi was a bit of an oddity, having only run the Sepang 12 Hours before joining the Intercontinental Cup event.

The four diesel drivers for Prototype qualifying consisted of Simon Pagenaud (No. 1 Peugeot), Tom Kristensen (#7 Audi), Stephane Sarrazin (#2 Peugeot), and Mad Dog Dingo Capello (#8 Audi). Jacques Nicolet was the LM P2 pole winner, simply by setting a time, while Steve Zacchia did the same in FLM.

The top LM P1 cars immediately set “dry” style times in the 1:23 range, indicating that conditions had improved - back to the sub-tropical humid? The diesel order settled into a Peugeot 1-2, Sarrazin atop Pagenaud. Further back, Johnny Cocker set a 1:29, well behind the Audis. That may be a tad disappointing since he had actually been quicker than one of the Audis during this morning’s practice; or it may simply be that he had secured fifth on the grid and there was no point risking the car. The Tokai Courage had a spin. It was one of the few laps that the car had taken all week—still recovering from damage due to a crash in testing.

These kerfuffles had come about because of the return of the rain—rather a surprise to all as the sky had been getting lighter. It can be hard to anticipate these changes since we’ve been under a perpetually gloomy sky all week.

The conditions caused grief even for Tom Kristensen as he went sliding off at Turn 9; a sharp right at the very back of the circuit. The Audi didn’t look too damaged, however. The team can ill afford ruining another tub.

Several cars, notably the Audi of Capello, swapped to inters, but it mattered little to the standings as the conditions (though not really bad) had deteriorated enough to leave the top spots frozen.

The Scirocco race that followed qualifying featured two drivers named Lo, two named Wang, three named Cheung (not to be confused with one Chong), and one Negro, who presumably is not. It was a slam bang affair with Yin banging Wang while Sun brightly slipped past. Kwong was king briefly. Yap barked and stopped and Lo went to the high spot. It became nearly a two Lo podium split by Yin after the Wang got in the way. Sun shone through to third at the end. (And this from a man called Wimpffen!!!) 

Politically incorrect, but fun.

Janos Wimpffen