Le Mans Series Test Days – Paul Ricard – Friday Morning

Well the bright and sunny bit didn’t last!  The weather seems to have followed us from the UK – temperatures are low, so are the clouds and there’s rain in the air.

A few changes to the entry here to update you on

JMB’s pair of FLM cars are actually an FLM car - #99 – for Manu Rodrigues, Jean Michel Menahem and Dino Lunardi and a GTE Am Ferrari 430 for Steve Quick, Nicolas Missilin and Khaled Al Qubaisi

The Young Driver AMR squad have an addition to their line up – Jonathan Kennard is driving alongside their already announced Enge/ Muller/ Nygaard combo – More news from them later on their season’s plans with the #86 Vantage.

The #46 TDS Racing Oreca 03 that we didn’t see yesterday is here today, absolutely brand new and in bare carbon.

Kessel Racing are on a scouting mission here – Phillip Peter is driving their #70 Ferrari 430 together with Michael Bromiszewski, the team have committed to the Paul Ricard season opener and will decide thereafter on further involvement in addition to their full season commitments in GT Open.

LMP news from Session 1 

The session ended at around 12:45 with the #12 Rebellion Lola Toyota towed in with a broken driveshaft.

Aside from that the reliability in LMP1 looks fine, the #16 Pescarolo, having been blessed in the pit garage, taking to the track in a form almost unchanged since its last racing appearance at Okayama in 2009.  The #16 car is though running the 5 litre version of the Judd V10 for the season.

Over at Quifel ASM, Olivier Pla was looking reasonably happy, the car fastest in the session but everyone keen to remind us that “this is early days yet” the #20 car posted a 1:46.851, 1.8 seconds faster than the #16 Pescarolo.

In LMP2 there was good news from one team not present this weekend, Greaves Racing reporting that the tub of their Zytek was not as badly damaged as originally feared from their Imola testing shunt.  They’ll be here for the race next month.

In a different sort of trouble were RML, their pristine Honda ARX-01d was reported to be reliable, well balanced and sweet handling but woefully short of puff from the new HPD twin turbo V6 – How short of puff?  DSC’s brief perusal of a speed trap chart showed the #36 car some 11 or 12 km/h slower than even the GTE cars!

Fastest of the LMP2 cars for much of the session was – RML’s old car, Rob Garofall sitting third fastest overall for some time in the #43 RLR Msport MG Lola Judd.

Race Performance seemed to spend much of the morning re assembling their car, arriving here after a brief shakedown.  That’s more than TDS could say, their Nissan engined Oreca 03 was delivered to them here yesterday, the team now shaking down the brand new car.  Despite that they posted the fastest time of the morning session, a 1:50.062, the Nissan powerplant clearly proving its pedigree in early running.   “it has a quite narrow powerband after the FLM V8 but the car seems very well balanced and handles very well.

Hunter Abbott was initially listed here as a fourth driver in the Neil Garner Motorsport FLM car but won’t now drive.

GT News from Session 1

The JMB Ferrari 430 had a mid session off suffering light damage to the rear right hand corner – It was back out and running before the session ended.

Simon Dolan was watching progress carefully on Jota’s immaculate (and very cleverly designed) data logging station, the team are thus far delighted with the Vantage and are using the sessions here to conduct runs to test for fuel economy and tyre degradation.

Raymond Narac was delighted with the positive response to the new livery for the pair of IMSA Performance Matmut Porsches and was very keen indeed to stress that the switch to Nicolas Armindo as his co-driver, after two seasons with Patrick Pilet was because “ I want to win GTE Am”.

Giancarlo Fisichella is back for his second season of GT2/ GTE racing with AF Corse – with two big changes for 2011.  The first is a switch to the new Ferrari 458 Italia and the second to a new co-driver, his near neighbour at home in Rome, Gianmaria Bruni.

“I really enjoyed last year in the GT car and was perhaps a little surprised to finish as high as second in our rookie year.  The team worked until 4am this morning to prepare the new car but we are out and running well today (5th fastest in the morning session in class and less than a second from the fastest GTE time).

The fastest of all this morning was the Hankook Team Farnbacher Ferrari 430 (1:59.306) as Allan Simonsen and Dominik Farnbacher work through tyre testing for Hankook.  The team’s Ferrari 458 is due by the end of this month and will contest a full LMS season, plus the Le Mans and Nurburgring 24 hours and a handful of late season VLN races too.

Hardy Fischer at Young Driver AMR was happy to confirm that the team’s current programme with their Aston Martin V8 Vantage includes the 6 hours of Le Castellet and the Le Mans Test Day but not the Spa 6 Hours, this race clashing with the GT1 World Championship.  Jonathan Kennard is testing today in anticipation of a requirement for a substitute driver later in the season. The team are keeping their fingers crossed for a currently unlikely 4 drop outs from Le Mans which would see their promotion from the reserve list.

Comparisons with 2010 times from first practice here

LMP1 – 2010 Oreca 01 AIM 1:42.963 – 2011 Quifel ASM Zytek 09SC 1:46.851
LMP2 – 2010 Strakka HPD 1:46.174 – 2011 TDS Oreca 03 Nissan 1:50.062
GT2 (GTE) – 2010 Prospeed Competition Porsche 1:59.213 – 2011 Hankook Farnbacher Ferrari F430 1:59.306
FLM – 2010 Hope Polevision 1:54.253 – 2011 JMB – 1:57.952