Nurburgring – Saturday Morning
Same Weather

Overcast again here today, which is a shame.

Perhaps we tried to draw too many conclusions from the ‘gap at the front’ yesterday?

Tim Holloway, Zytek designer: “We’ve got a lot more to come.” The Arena 07 lost a little tracvk time yesterday with a ratio change between sessions.

Johnny Mowlem, GPC Ferrari #83: “I set a 2:01.1 on 6-7 lap old tyres, in traffic.” The secret is getting a clear lap – which the 908s seemed to do.

“I last raced here in 2000, in the ALMS race: David Murry and I finished second in class (GT) in the Skea Porsche.”

So much has happened since then, hasn’t it?

For example, we’d never heard of a Lavaggi then, but here’s one at the Nurburgring. But Giovanni is not very happy. “I’m not talking to the press. People wrote that my car was slower than a GT2 car at Monza, which is completely untrue. I overtook GT2 cars, GT1 cars and LMP2s at Monza. We haven’t done enough testing…”

Christian Corsini will be the team owner’s co-driver this weekend.

There was a much brighter feel to a conversation with Eric van de Poele and Didier Theys, who always seem to be in a good mood.

“We arrived with the Valencia set-up,” began Didier Theys, “because we don’t have the budget for testing, so we changed the set-up during the day and it was much better in the afternoon.” Once again, they’re seeking a trouble-free run, as at Monza. “We haven’t had an engine failure before,” says Theys (referring the retirement at Valencia).

And what about the Maserati MC12, run by Kevin Doran?

“Yes, we tested it at Road America about two weeks ago. We need to finalise the configuration of the car with IMSA, but if we race it at Road America and it goes well, we will probably do Petit Le Mans.”

The conversation with Eric van de Poele was more of an off the record one, which we’ll follow up next week. Michael Bartels will be here tomorrow, and will probably confirm the Vitaphone Spa line-ups which we mentioned yesterday. The third session kicks off at 11.40 (about 20 minutes from now).

Nothing to do with anything at the track – but our hotel is fantastic! It’s so good we can’t tell you where it is…. But this is it, as we left for the track this morning.. The garden even includes a little 'Stonehenge'.