Saturday Morning
Catching Up

The Chad Peninsula Panoz boys worked until 4 am this morning, and the Esperante is ready to. Sean and Michael McInerney arrived with big smiles on their faces – but with effectively no track time for any of the drivers so far, the main target this weekend will be a steady finish.

“We’ve been able to re-use an awful lot of bits,” said their spokesman. “Our bodywork man has been stitching parts together and beefing them up. The rrof for example is OK for this weekend, but it will need replacing.”

Sticking with the GT2s, Rob Bell and Allan Simonsen are happy at Virgo. “It got better and better yesterday,” said Bell. Race engineer Steve Bunkhall said that he’d never seen so many yellows as he saw yesterday. He fancied that this is a Porsche track, with so many second and third gear corners, and with the Porsche’s famed traction.

Marc Lieb, fastest in class, was less sure. “We have an advantage if it’s wet, but the lap times between the Ferrari and Porsche are very close. We’re catching up with Ferrari. We had a tyre test at Estoril last week, and we’ll see the benefits of that by the Nurburgring.”

Lieb’s 1:36.8 was on new tyres, but not necessarily with the best map, “and it wasn’t a clear lap”.

“We’ve changed the car for today to make it more consistent, so it won’t be so quick in qualifying as it could be. I don’t care about qualifying.”

Among the prototypes, everyone is happy at Bruichladdich, with the car reliable and quick: basically no stories, no dramas.

Zytek designer Tim Holloway is very happy with the two Zyteks, and describes Valencia as the “LMP2 circuit of the year”. It’s still very early days with the LMP1 car, and Arena is working away at set-up. “The new chassis is sufficiently different that it does affect the aero. Set-up is a one-off special for this place, and we’re still working on that this morning,” he explained.

The brand new T2M Dome had electrical problems in both sessions yesterday and didn’t set a time. The car was brought straight from the RfH workshop to Valencia, with not even a shakedown beforehand.

Harold Primat explains his spin yesterday. “We tried something at the rear, which meant I locked up and the rear snapped round. It was just a spin into the gravel.

“I tried new tyres, but on every lap I had (came across) six cars: very frustrating.”

What about the new Lola Audi then? Marcel Fassler: “I only did one timed lap yesterday – the other two drivers spent the time in the car. Jean-Denis had to get his laps in because he’s at Silverstone now.

“We need to learn a lot about the car and what makes it work well. The times are not the issue at the moment: we know that the Lola is competitive. The race meeting is like a training session for us, so that we can learn as much as possible for Le Mans. The reliability of the car is very good, but we’re still adjusting everything, calibrating everything…”

Fassler suggested that he would be happy with a 1;26 in qualifying.

And so onto the third session, on a cloudless Saturday morning.

The Pescarolos took the early lead during the period with the Peugeots calmly working on setup. A few comments about these new diesel entries—yes, it is nice to have coupes in LM P1 and from the side the 908s look like proper race cars. From the front it is another matter altogether. The very narrow but tall cockpit looks decidedly misshapen. It looks less a sports-racer than something belonging on a 1950s bubble car—think Messerschmitt. The cockpit seems to simply be plopped atop the rest of the body—more floating than attached really. The inlet tunnels are inordinately huge, perhaps just a perception given the small cockpit, but the whole is less than the sum of the part—not a classic design although still better than a DP, whatever that says.

The session was noted for two general trends. One was the steady improvement of the better LM P2 runners. The other was an inordinate number of trips into gravel – as yesterday. This bodes for an incident packed race once the lapping really counts.

Jacques Nicolet in the No. 35 Saulnier Courage was the first to head off. He went straight on at Turn 11, the tricky kink that marks the end of what might be called the back straight. In reality, this circuit only has one straight. Any other straight piece of tarmac is almost an aberration.

Iradj Alexander was another to visit the marbles. His Swiss Spirit Lola-Audi has been running well, if not spectacularly on its debut. Marc Rostan had a more fraught time, spinning the Bruneau Pilbeam at the exit of the fast uphill Turn 6. He was stranded on the racing line for a while and was nearly clobbered by one of the Peugeots. After some delay he got going again.

The Chad Peninsula Panoz is running again after overnight repairs but spent the session nearly at the bottom of the time charts. John Hartshorne was another to take a turn at spinning. The GT2 car was still ahead of the hapless Dome-Mader, which once again failed to complete a true flying lap. Yutaka Yamagishi seemed to finally get it going at the end of the session, before becoming the last one to spin.

The Peugeots crept their way past the petrol Pescarolos as the first half of the session was completed. Then we had a bit of pleasant drama as Spain’s own Angel Burgueño blasted the ASM Team Lola-AER to not only top in LM P2, but second overall, a mere half-second off the top Peugeot. Marc Gene, despite some good individual sectors, could only manage third in the No. 7 Peugeot. Jean-Marc Gounon was another running well but not able to string together fast spurts without then encountering traffic. He’s aboard the Del Bello Courage, which seems to have gotten past their scrutineering dilemmas.

The American engined cars in GT1 were topped by an English car, namely the No. 59 Team Modena Aston Martin. Christian Fittipaldi had the honor of fast lap. In GT2, the Ferrari-Porsche battle tilted toward the F430s with yet another Spaniard, Sergio Hernandez quickest.

Denny Zardo, No. 78 Villorba Corse Ferrari, did manage to reel off a good set of laps to propel the team up the GT2 order. The No. 61 Saleen and the No. 41 Kruse Pescarolo were among those to suffer spins at the quick kinky turn 11. The lone America in the race, Liz Halliday, chose the infield section to deposit the No. 59 Team Modena Aston in the gravel.

GT2 became a slightly different kind of mixture, the Monza Ferrari winner from GPC going fastest, from Richard Lietz in the #75 IMSA Porsche, then Dirk Werner for Farnbacher Porsche, then the Virgo and Villorba Corse Ferraris.

With 18 minutes to go we had a true highlight with Marcel Fassler taking the Lola-Audi to 2nd overall with a fine 1:26.534. Fassler had of course suggested a 1:26 in qualifying, and is nearly there, despite very little track time himself yesterday. Marc Gene battled back a few minutes later to again make it a Peugeot 1-2. Meanwhile, Pedro Lamy’s 1:26.103 would become the best of the session in the other Peugeot. No sooner does Fassler set that good time when the No. 5 car becomes one of the last to take a spin. The Racing for Holland Dome pulls off, out of fuel: “A miscalculation”. Michael Vergers is the last to complete a good lap, taking the No. 32 Barazi Zytek to third overall, boding well again for the prospects of the LM P2 cars putting into a more than competitive performance in qualifying and the race.

Vergers: “If I could just have Zytek’s A1GP press to pass button…. The car is great, and there’s still more time to come. I had traffic on that lap but they did cooperate. We’re still making very small adjustments to the car to make it even better.”

How important is qualifying going to be? “Very important. If I can qualify third, the Peugeots will open up the gaps in the traffic. I originally predicted a 1:25.7 for the LMP2 pole, but maybe that time ought to be a bit more adventurous.”

Elsewhere, others are planning on a less adventurous policy with Chamberlain-Synergy having a better day, Bob Berridge moving into the 1:27s, and Warren Hughes into the 1:28s in the Embassy Radical.

There’s a lovely mix of P2s and P1s throughout the times so far, whether looking at just this morning’s times or the combined from the three sessions. This morning it was Barazi-Epsilon third and Quife ASM fifth as the best of the P2s, with RML tenth and Bruichladdich twelfth.