ALMS – Lime Rock Park - Northeast Grand Prix
Afternoon Report
© Russell Wittenberg

As posted here earlier the qualifying sessions have been cancelled due to the weather conditions. The rain, and lightning, arrived about 2:00 pm, got fairly heavy and finally let up around 3:00 pm. ALMS made the decision to forgo qualifying and keep the 2nd practice session by pushing its starting time back to 3:30 pm. ALMS also announced that the marked tire qualifying rule will also be waived since no cars practised on marked tires.

As always when these kind of decisions are made, some are happy and some are not. Penske and Dyson are the two most pleased with the current situation. Dumas and Bernard in the #7 Porsche Spyder dominated the morning practice and were rewarded with the provisional pole position.

Romain Dumas: "Last year at Mosport we had the same situation, so we though that we had to push harder in practice because it might rain during qualifying. We did not use new tires and we did not maximize our fuel situation. But we did push for qualifying speeds, and it paid off."

Dyson Racing was maybe the only one to deliberately gamble on this exact situation happening. Chris Dyson explains: "We looked at the forecast and made a judgment based on ALMS's past decisions to use practice times to set the field if qualifying is cancelled. So we thought it would be important to set a fast time in the early session. We worked on our baseline set up early in the session. The track was a little green from all the rain last night, but we had a good set up from the testing on Tuesday."

Guy Smith added, "They put on new tires and sent me back out to put in a quick one. I got a pretty clear lap but that is tough to get here. There is definitely more in the car; more in me really. Chris did a great job setting the car up during the test. But I haven't had that much track time here and I could have gone quicker."

The team feels that they have made significant progress as of late with this car and are closing the gap between themselves and Penske. Lots of 'homework' was done during the break, along with testing at Mid-Ohio and Road America. Chris Dyson: "I think Utah was more of a real reflection of what we are capable of doing. We have made some huge gains in learning about this car. The Spyder offers some set up options that just aren't available on some other cars. We have been putting together a cookbook of ideas for this car. We are real confident now that we will be in the mix."

The 2nd and last practice for the ALMS got off to a soggy start. The track was still very wet and only a few ventured out. Penske, all the Acura teams, P/WL and Tafel were among the early runners. All wanting to do some wet tire runs in case there was more of this come tomorrow. Most others were content to wait for the track to dry, as the sun was starting to peek out from behind the clouds.

Even with a drying track no real significant times would be posted. The Penske Spyders would be quickest again, but this time it was the #6 car coming out on top.

Two teams that probably wished they would have stayed safely under their tents in the paddock were the Flying Lizards and Intersport.

Climbing the hill entering the chicane, Allan McNish misjudged his pass of van Overbeek and chopped across the 997's nose. van Overbeek slid off track and contacted the guard rail, damaging the left side of his car. Both front and rear fenders are damaged as well as the radiator. The team thinks that is the extent of the damage but repairs are just getting underway. McNish was penalized for avoidable contact.

This is the first time the R10s have run at this track. The drivers are commenting on the weight of the R10 being a factor and that they are still searching for the correct set up for this unique type of circuit.

Jon Field had just taken the track shortly after the above incident. As he entered the chicane, on cold tires, he lost traction, spun and hit the barriers. It looked to be just bodywork damage to the left side as the car drove back to paddock area under its own power.

The Corvettes came out when the track was good and dry. Each car did just three laps and called it quits. They obviously have no reason to take any unnecessary chances.

Rain or shine the P/WL Ferrari has been the quickest GT2 today . They also are trying to give Darren Turner as much seat time as possible. Turner proided these comments: "I could certainly use some more track time but the car is getting on very well. It has been one extreme to the other for me here. I'm going from the Aston Martin GT1 to the Ferrari GT2 and also from Le Mans to this track. Both situations are very different."

Mike Lewis: "We had a very good test at Road Atlanta. We race a pretty stiff setup there and it worked well. That same setup did not work good here this morning. It was way too stiff. So we have made some major changes to soften it up and hopefully that will be an improvement."

Jamie Bach: "We had a good test here Tuesday. We were able to run some competitive times. This morning we ran a race simulation to check tire wear. That went very well but it didn't help that those times were also to be our qualifying. But that's okay, we're still happy with our progress so far."

Adam Pecorari, van de Steur Radical: "We have a long way to go but we are making some progress. We had a couple of good tests at Summit and Mid-Ohio, but we just don't have any baseline for this track. Our set up is way off right now. We have made shock changes, springs, camber; a little of everything looking for the right combination. Radical gave us a baseline that just was not working so we are really on our own here."

Session 2 Times
1 1 6 P2 Maassen/Briscoe 45.704 121.302 16 -.--- 18 Porsche / RS Spyder
2 2 7 P2 Dumas/Bernhard 46.009 120.498 6 0.305 7 Porsche / RS Spyder
3 1 1 P1 Capello/McNish 47.025 117.895 17 1.321 25 Audi / R10 TDI
4 3 9 P2 Brabham/Johansson/Dayton 47.498 116.721 26 1.794 26 Acura / ARX-01a
5 4 15 P2 Fernandez/Diaz 47.956 115.606 17 2.252 21 Lola / B06-43
6 2 2 P1 Pirro/Werner 48.048 115.385 11 2.344 16 Audi / R10 TDI
7 5 26 P2 Herta/Franchitti 48.728 113.774 14 3.024 15 Acura / ARX-01a
8 6 16 P2 Wallace/Leitzinger 49.012 113.115 10 3.308 16 Porsche / RS Spyder
9 7 8 P2 Bach/Devlin 49.972 110.942 20 4.268 23 Lola / B07-46 Mazda
10 1 31 GT2 Petersen/Enge/Turner 54.481 101.760 24 8.777 27 Ferrari / 430 GT
11 2 71 GT2 Henzler/Liddell 54.678 101.394 13 8.974 28 Porsche / 911 GT3 RSR
12 3 21 GT2 Auberlen/Hand 54.752 101.257 34 9.048 40 Panoz / Esperante GTLM
13 4 54 GT2 Pappas/Borcheller 55.013 100.776 24 9.309 42 Porsche / 911 GT3 RSR
14 5 61 GT2 Helary/Jonsson 55.199 100.437 12 9.495 13 Ferrari / 430 GT
15 6 44 GT2 Neiman/Law 55.273 100.302 7 9.569 10 Porsche / 911 GT3 RSR
16 7 45 GT2 van Overbeek/Bergmeister 55.397 100.078 4 9.693 5 Porsche / 911 GT3 RSR
17 8 18 GT2 Kelleners/Milner 55.416 100.043 12 9.712 18 Porsche / 911 GT3 RSR
18 9 73 GT2 Tafel/Farnbacher 55.929 99.126 10 10.225 25 Porsche / 911 GT3 RSR
19 1 3 GT1 O'Connell/Magnussen 58.340 95.029 2 12.636 3 Corvette / C-6R
20 2 4 GT1 Beretta/Gavin 58.952 94.043 2 13.248 3 Corvette / C-6R
21 8 19 P2 van der Steur/Pecorari 1:23.171 66.658 1 37.467 2 Radical SR9
22 3 37 P1 Field/Field/Berry -.--- --- 0 -.--- 0 Creation / CA06H
23 10 62 GT2 Salo/Melo -.--- --- 0 -.--- 0 Ferrari / 430 GT
24 4 12 P1 Lewis/McMurry -.--- --- 0 -.--- 0 Creation / CA06H
25 9 20 P2 Dyson/Smith -.--- --- 0 -.--- 0 Porsche / RS Spyder