Paul Ricard Test Days – Sunday Afternoon Report
Weekend At Bernie’s
(it's taken us three years to use that)

As expected really, the poor old Ed. can’t keep up: it’s 21.00 and we’re only just getting to the afternoon’s events. But in the meantime that ‘Jiveass’ Regis Lefebure has emailed me demanding the next update – and I can’t get emails to send from here for some reason, so really this is a short summary, mainly for the benefit of that Lefebure fellow… and you of course.

Allan McNish stopped by during dinner (lovely it was too), and he provided some context to the dramatic reduction in lap times. But even he didn’t really know what times to expect here.

“We haven’t tested on this configuration of the track. We knew what the Peugeots did last year, but that was very early into their 2007 programme.”

With the natural development that takes place anyway, whatever the Peugeots might have set last year, had they been running to their potential (which as the year evolved we would have expected to be three to four seconds quicker than the petrol-fuelled cars, rather than the almost nothing here last March) has been eclipsed by one of the Audis today.

“The grip always goes up at the end of the day,” continued the Scot, “particularly at the bottom end of the circuit.” He seemed pleased with his 1:39.705 – but as we know, the 908 was faster than the R10 at Sebring recently – and the Peugeots aren’t here this weekend.

But the Audis are impressively, quietly, very fast. The Joest team spent the day trying some new developments, new rubber, and gathering aero data on the Mistral – “You can’t do that at Sebring, it’s too bumpy”.

It’s hard to compare diesel vs. the rest (2007 to 2008) because the rest are lighter this year, and slightly more powerful – but if the McNish 1:39.705 was impressive, so was JC-W’s 1:42.174 – which isn’t listed on the times we posted at 18.00, because it, and Stuart Hall’s 1:42.9 in the Creation (on harder Dunlop rubber than JC-W), were set soon after the 18.00 cut-off.

Everyone at Creation was thrilled at being fastest of the petrol cars – and three hours later, they still were, with quick times not being set as teams typically went for long, night-time runs. So can we say that 2007 908 advantage of three or four seconds is now more like two and a bit (R10 to the rest)? Well yes, we possibly can. But is the 908 a significant amount faster than the R10? Sebring will confirm that – or not.

Oh, we're sure that Peugeot's best time here recently is a 1:38.9.

More on the afternoon in a little while: last point for now – Jenson Button was here today, with his mate Chris Buncombe (with a certain Scott, below). Marc Laffeas managed to eleicit the comment that Jenson was here because the weather is good. No, he’s not expecting to race an LMP1 car. Oh and he lives at Monaco, so it’s just a short trip to get here.

Happy now Regis? Oh and Lordy, we'll get to photos - 'cos we'll be up all night! (and now we have)