Sebring 12 Hours – Prototype Qualifying
Strange Qualifying 1
© Gary Horrocks

Oops.

The strategy of waiting towards the end of the session backfired here on many, as only about 8 minutes into the 25 minutes session, the BK Mazda with Ben Devlin had a big one in turn 1. He walked away from it, but everybody else was forced to walk away from the session, as with 10 minutes to go, the session was cancelled due to the amount of damage in the turn.

According to the description (from Didier Theys who was following), the car hit the inside wall tail of the car came around, clipped the inside wall of the turn, and somehow the car got airborne, semi-rolled and landed on its wheels, after getting about 10-20 feet into the air. “As high as that trailer,” said the Belgian. The car came down into the tire wall and the catch fencing. Needless to say, the car was in bad shape. A new tub was being unloaded from the transporter, even before the car was dropped off from the wrecker.

This shortened session just barely gave us a sneak at the battle up front between Audi and Peugeot. But give the first win to Peugeot, with Stephane Sarrazin quailifying the car at a new track record of 1:43.117. The old track record was a 1:44.974, set last year.

The first significant time belonged to Allan McNish, who set a 1:45.007, with Lucas Luhr following in the #2 Audi with a 1:45.123. Then it was McNish with a 1:44.841, followed quickly by Luhr, dropping down to a 1:44.291. Then it was the turn of Sarrazin, who set his time.

McNish countered with a 1:43.7, but then the session was stopped.

Allan McNish:"It proved once more you have to be on it all of the time and be consistently fast in every session. This prepares you for every eventuality. Personally I don’t think it was right to cancel qualifying but we’ll start from pole-position and aim to stay in front in the race."

Ralf Jüttner (Technical Director): "So far this has been a typical Sebring week. Track conditions keep changing so quickly that you are always following the changes with your work. Generally we have achieved quite a good basis – especially with car number one. On the second car we still have to do some fine-tuning for the race."

In LMP2, the 3 Acura entries were just looking at heading out and the Penske Porsche Spyders were waiting until later as is customary for them. Thus, none of those five cars recorded representative times.

The session ended with the Dyson team 1-2 in the class.

In the words of the late, great Rosanne Rosanna Danna, “never mind.”

As the pole winners gathered in the interview center, it was announced that the times from the session were to be erased and the grid was to be set, based upon times set in the previous three practice sessions. This meant different “pole” winners in each class, with McNish/Dingo Capello/Tom Kistensen getting P1 and overall, and Romain Dumas/Timo Bernhard/Emmanuel Collard took the P2 “pole”.

This caused some great confusion and frustration among the teams, especially the Dyson Team, which lost a 1-2 class starting position. Rob Dyson was visibly upset when he first heard that the session was to be disallowed, but after discussions with IMSA officials came away OK with the ruling, but feeling that the rule itself is wrong.

“Rules are rules and the practice session was two minutes shorter than it should have been. When they red flagged it, they kept the clock going and they could not restart it. Since qualifying ran less that half the allotted time, starting positions were determined by practice times,” said Rob Dyson.

“It is too bad, because we do not run practice sessions as qualifying sessions. Plus they not only penalized the top two classes in this event, the P1 and P2 Classes, but they also penalized all the GT guys. I think it is a hollow accomplishment for those who benefited from it. Thise that did not benefit from it and got hurt from it, are feeling the way that we do, that somehow we were cheated out of a position we earned.”

“The rule has to be changed. I think the rule has to be that when there is a red flag in qualifying, the clock has to be stopped and every reasonable effort made to restart the session.”

In the media center, it was announced that all of the qualifying session was to be cancelled, but in the paddock, there was belief that the GT class sessions would still count. That did not prove true. A later verification from the series confirmed that indeed all of the sessions were cancelled.

We’ve posted the times that were set in the qualifying session, as well as the (completely different) provisional grid. The former shows Jon Field with an impressive, very Field-like, 1:45.064.

“We had an engine problem at the end of the morning session, and with no time to change it, the engineer thought I had maybe two laps to set a time with it. With the engine on full rich, I had to speed going out of the pit lane, so then I had to pit for the penalty next time round – but the tyres were optimum and I went for it.” Indeed he did.

Last P news: Ian Bickerton at Creation AIM, here with wishbones for Autocon, reports that the second Creation tub arrived at the team’s base today. “We’re going to Magny-Cours next week, for two days of geometry work – with JC-W, Stuart Hall and Simon Pagenaud driving.”

GT report to come in a while.