LMS, Silverstone – Free Practice 3
Back Up To Full Strength

The morning journey across Northamptonshire had been one of alternating fog and bright blue sky but by the time the final practice session of the meeting got underway the fog was but a memory, Silverstone was bathed in unfamiliar sunshine.

The good news continued, soon all 40 cars were out glinting in the light.  An all-nighter for Team WFR was clearly worthwhile with Darren Manning building his pace nicely through a series of progressively quicker laps to low 1:42 within the first 15 minutes in the WF01.  Everything certainly looked to be screwed back together properly.  Myles Schofield reported that “everyone was up until 6.30 this morning, rebuilding the car (after Darren Manning’s off yesterday).”  In the process, the bottoming has been cured, the team suspecting a damper problem yesterday. They’re all much happier with life today.

The Alphand Corvette was also circulating albeit a little slower than the times set by the Aston Martin and the Saleen so far.  The Chevrolet crew would very much be playing catch up today, although they went on to find some time and ended the session in close proximity to their classmates.

The sensational Pla/Ginetta Zytek/Dunlop combination ascended to yet new levels – the P2 car actually topped the timesheets after 20 minutes with a 1:34.739.  Only Boullion had done a quicker lap (yesterday) so far in this meeting.  Oilvier Pla’s lap time progression has been fairly extraordinary: 1:37.634 and 36.548 yesterday, then the 34.739 this morning. Can he go quicker in qualifying this afternoon?

“I don’t think so – but it was great to be at the top of the time sheets at the start of the session. I was expecting a lot here, it’s a track that’s good for the Ginetta Zytek, the whole package. I won my first GP2 race here.”

The Quifel ASM tyre engineer is Dunlop’s Tony Flynn, who was somewhat surprised to be sought out by DSC. Like Pla, he also referred to the whole package contributing to the form of this team.

“Everything has come together and clicked. The tyres have been superb, Oly is as quick as anyone, the chassis is quick, the engine too, Muggo (Alan Mugglestone) gives the car a great set-up – it’s just everything coming together.”

Flynn, like Pla, was not expecting a quicker time in qualifying: “This circuit changes a lot, between sessions, it’s a law unto itself.” However, with the track getting quicker here session by session, perhaps qualifying times will be faster again?

The Dunlop race tyre in P2 is the same as has been used at and since Le Mans.

With half of the hour-long session expired, Stefan Mucke put his P1 car back ahead with a 1:34.1, half a second ahead of the improving Pescarolo in the hands of Christophe Tinseau.

JMW headed GT2 almost throughout with a 1:49.639 ahead of IMSA Matmut and Hankook.  Title hopefuls Felbermayr #77 were languishing down in sixth for much of the session prior to Lietz’s best (still half a second down) moving them to fourth with 10 minutes to go.    

Andy Meyrick and Narain Karthikeyan had the Kolles Audi running competitively (third in P1), but the #15 sister car was two seconds slower, ahead of only the Signature Oreca.

Nicolas Lapierre took the Oreca up to 2nd with a 1:34.284 and Danny Watts had Strakka up to 5th. 

Darren Turner was next to top the times, his 1:33.821 meaning Lola Aston Martins held first and second.  This was the only time to be posted below a 1:34. 

Tristan Gommendy repeated his fine efforts of yesterday, up to 4th briefly with a 1:39.556 but only for Warren Hughes to reward the WFR mechanics for fixing the damper problem with a late 1:39.496.  Hopefully this would be the turning point for Jonathan France’s team’s weekend.  G.A.C. and Speedy were second and third in class but were over three seconds down on Pla’s time.

In non-Ferrari and Porsche GT2 news, Spyker and Aston Martin finished fifth and seventh in GT2, Jonny Cocker popping in a last gasp 1:50.687, just a second down on best in class.  GT2 looks very open indeed this weekend.

Greg Mansell posted a 1:36.215 at the flag to record the factory Ginetta’s best time of the session, 9th in class, just over a second behind Strakka’s example.

With the session running largely incident free to the chequered flag, Turner held his sub 1:34 time then those under 1:35 were #007, #10, #16, #40 and #14, all covered by just a second.

PS & MCC(!)