FIA GT Silverstone - Sunday Morning Warm-Up

And it needs to warm up too – A chilly Sunday morning saw 27 of the 30 cars out on track – The #23 and #36 Astons and the #5 Corvette opting to stay in the garages – no problems for any of them.

On track there was a mid session drama for the PSI Corvette, the car stopping out on circuit, problem unknown at time of writing.

Neither Stefan Mucke nor Marc Basseng has ever raced here at Silverstone before – Indeed Basseng has never before visited this sceptred isle!

For his co-driver Mucke, and for Jean Denis Deletraz in the garage next door, it is going to be a very busy day – “I will do the second stint here and that jean Denis and I will go by helicopter at 1:15 to Luton where there is a private jet waiting to take us top Valencia. If I’m there in time I hope to do a double stint to finish the race.”

Nigel Mansell was a lot happier this morning with the #63 Scuderia Ecosse Ferrari this morning, a wide grin and a “well done” for the team as he got back to the garage.

“That was the first time all weekend that I had something that I could really drive. The changes overnight have really worked and I now feel that I can press hard for the first time, to make it do the things I really want it to do. It’s not perfect but it really is so much better.

“ We’re going for a finish but having closed the gap to the lead car by 1.5 seconds in that session I’m a bit more optimistic. It’s really been a taster and I’ve enjoyed it, it’s a good car and Stewart Roden has a great team around him.

Does Le Mans hold any appeal?

“I would only ever consider it if I felt there was a genuine chance of an overall win. The package would have to be something pretty special.”

Andrea Bertolini meanwhile was not looking forward to what will likely be a difficult afternoon for the #11 Playteam Sara MC12:

“We will struggle today because of the penalty (the car must serve a drive through penalty in the first 5 laps of the race) the car though is very good but it has been a bad start to the season. The car stopped out of fuel at Zhuhai and now we have the penalty here, we will probably take it after the very first lap.

“It’s particularly disappointing as of course I won the Tourist Trophy here last year and hoped to do it again. We hope it rains!”

And it looks possible that it might well do just that.

Peter Kox

“We are doing OK I think, this is Jos’ [Menten] first time at Silverstone and he is going well and the car is almost there I think, we just need a little bit more pace. We were on old tyres and our team mates had new, so we are quite happy. Of course, we don’t know who is on new tyres and who on old. By the way, I read Jean-Denis’ [Deletraz] comments on dailysportscar.com and I agree that because none of the teams have 3 drivers and we are down to a two hour race, one stop makes a lot of sense to me. You need as quick a pitstop as you can, and one stop makes sense because the HANS device was not designed for endurance racing. Whilst we can get in and out of the car very fast, it is the belts that then cause a problem. If you have two stops, that is twice that you might have a problem.”

Jos Menten

“Yes, it is my first time here in a race car, I did a trackday in a Lotus to get to know the corners but this is totally different! It’s a good track, I like the fast corners and it is all fluent, there is no Mercedes Arena here! I like it very much. With new tyres we will go faster and the big thing for us is to get some understeer out of the car, which Michelin are helping us with.

Luke Hines

“I think this weekend will be a learning curve for us because we have switched from Michelin to Pirelli tyres so we have a lot to learn about the car on these tyres. The Wendlinger Aston Martin seems very fast out there…”

Jonathan Cocker

“We’ve been changing a few things and going in different directions to work towards where we want to be for the weekend. At the moment the car is a little bit nervous. I didn’t go for a time as I didn’t get a clear lap, so we didn’t do a meaningful time but we have got some good data. It was great to get a point and we are learning a lot in our first season at this level, but the plan is to keep scoring points and get right up there.”