FIA GT Championship, Silverstone – Saturday Morning
Cold Start, But At Least It’s Dry

So the madness, for us, of Silverstone on Saturday begins. But it’s tough for the FIA GT teams too, because there’s only just over an hour between the two free practice sessions – or between the first session and what is being called the qualifying (for drivers) session.

For teams at the top of the time sheets, that shouldn’t be a problem, but for those with cars that aren’t close to their optimum here, that’s a struggle.

And so it is for the Peka team with the Saleen.

“We’re slow on the straights, about 10 kph down,” reports Anthony Kumpen, “and it was the same at Monza. And we’re also lacking mechanical grip.”

Changes were made in the session, but the team needed time to look at the data, and there wouldn’t be much of that before session 2.

Wolfgang Kaufmann was slower than he would have liked, in the AT Racing Corvette C5, struggling on the hard Citation Cup tyres, and with “oversteer and understeer, and the dashboard only works some of the time. It’s important for Allaksandr (Talkanitsa) to get as much track time as possible, but other than a track day here recently, he doesn’t know Silverstone.”

Up at the front in GT1, it was no surprise to see the likes of the Vitaphone MC12s, the #33 Jetalliance DBR9 and Fassler in one of the Phoenix C6.Rs – but nestling neatly in fifth was the Gigawave Aston Martin.

And here was a story. Was it a problem getting heat into the tyres, Allan Simonsen? “No, not at all. I set that lap at the start of the session, on my second flying lap.”

What? But surely you haven’t driven a GT1 car here before? “That’s right,” he replied, rather matter of factly.

That seemed highly impressive to me….

The Kirkaldy / Bell CR Scuderia Ferrari was fastest in GT2, ahead of a number of GT1 runners (well, the two Citation Cup cars and one other) – and almost a second clear of the second fastest GT2, the Vilander / Bruni AF Corse 430.

The Collard / Westbrook ProSpeed Porsche was close behind in third.

Emmanuel Collard: “This is my first session in this car, apart from a few laps at Nogaro, but most of that was in the rain. It’s all brand new and performance wise we are not bad, we are very close to the fastest time but we need to fix the car for the race, for one lap we are not bad, but it is not right for the whole race yet. I’m not sure which direction we need to go because it is all new to me, but I hope we find a good solution!”

Paolo Ruberti: “I was standing in the garage yesterday and a mechanic was working and a piece of carbon flew up and hit me in the eye. I went to the hospital and had some medication there and it is fine now [although still rather red]. I have only done three or four laps to give Matteo [Malucelli] a good run as we need to get rid of the understeer, we have a problem with the balance of the car. We’re hoping for rain, it will be better for us.”

Gianmaria Bruni: “It was very cold, very cold. We’re struggling with getting heat into the tyres which is losing us a little bit but we’ll work on the set-up to help with tyre temperatures. We are P1 though (which he was at the time – Ed), with my time but I am not totally happy about it. For sure we are here this year to win the championship, I came so close last year, but this year we have more experience with the team, the car and the circuits. Having a second car in the team will help, it is a strong car too, Thomas [Biagi] brings so much experience and knowledge and with two competitive cars the engineers get lots of good data and we can get conclusions very quickly.”

Jamie Davies: “We’ve just been trying different tyres this morning really to see what direction we need to go in, it’s a bit cold for what we wanted to do but we aren’t looking in too bad shape. If we get the right compound mix we’ll be away but we just need to find the sweet spot. The car is proven, Fabio and I are proven too, as is the team. The package is there we just need to make sure we get the best out of it.”

Richard Williams: “A baptism of fire, basically a very frustrating first test. We have really bad understeer and have a lot of work to do.”

Chris Niarchos: “It’s nice to get back into the car, I’ve only done seven hours of driving in as many months. It’s going well, all the other drivers have been mega and on old tyres I’m only about a second and a half off so I’m pleased with progress and delighted to be here with our own team, doing things.”

For reasons that have yet to become clear, the Go To One Moslers haven’t been on track yet.

There is an addition to the entry list we posted a few days ago, and that’s the #13 Team Rbimmo / B-Racing Saleen, for Jos Menten and Andrea Piccini.
MC & PS

Saturday Morning Times
1 33 GT1 Wendlinger/Sharp Aston Martin DBR9 1:44.106
2 5 GT1 Fassler/Deletraz Corvette C6R 1:44.121
3 1 GT1 Bertolini/Bartels Maserati MC12 1:44.491
4 2 GT1 Ramos/Negrao Maserati MC12 1:44.965
5 10 GT1 Peter/Simonsen Aston Martin DBR9 1:45.442
6 3 GT1 Bouchut/Maassen Corvette C6R 1:45.669
7 6 GT1 Hezemans/Gollin Corvette C6R 1:46.149
8 36 GT1 Lichtner-Hoyer/Muller Aston Martin DBR9 1:46.801
9 7 GT1 Vosse/Franchi Saleen S7R 1:46.902
10 8 GT1 Kox/Rusonov Lamborghini Murcielago 1:47.236
11 4 GT1 Kumpen/Longin Saleen S7R 1:47.437
12 37 GT1 Tuero/Mazzacane Ferrari 550 Maranello 1:48.958
13 56 GT2 Kirkaldy/Bell Ferrari F430 GT2 1:49.393
14 13 GT1 Menten/Piccini Saleen S7R 1:49.441
15 15 GT1 Kutemann/Aucott Maserati MC12 1:49.549
16 12 GT1 Talkanitsa/Kaufmann Corvette C5R 1:49.595
17 50 GT2 Vilander/Bruni Ferrari F430 GT2 1:50.244
18 61 GT2 Collard/Westbrook Porsche 997 GT3 RSR 1:50.447
19 55 GT2 Niarchos/Mullen Ferrari F430 GT2 1:50.476
20 60 GT2 Forsten/Palttala Porsche 997 GT3 RSR 1:50.898
21 62 GT2 Babini/Davies Ferrari F430 GT2 1:51.382
22 51 GT2 Biagi/Montanari Ferrari F430 GT2 1:51.525
23 77 GT2 Malucelli/Ruberti Ferrari F430 GT2 1:52.153
24 59 GT2 Ashburn/Williams Porsche 997 GT3 RSR 1:52.620
25 57 GT2 Moser/Del Monte Ferrari F430 GT2 1:53.684
26 78 GT2 Camathias/Rigon Ferrari F430 GT2 1:53.753
27 95 GT2 Russo/Perez Companc Ferrari F430 GT2 1:54.008
28 101 G2 Leinders/Kuppens Gillet Vertigo 1:57.404
29 111 G2 Konopka/Konrad/Edwards Saleen S7R 2:00.959