ILMC/ALMS, Petit Le Mans - Thursday Afternoon McNish Just Barely; Field Slimming Down It’s actually a beautiful day here at Road Atlanta. The sun is out and we’re at a race track with all sorts of race cars making glorious sounds as they speed around the track. It’s almost enough to turn a 50+ year old into a little boy again. Almost… Early on in the session, it is the expected diesels at the front. Just past 15 minutes into the session, the top 4 – all diesels – were all in the 1:10s, and were within .47 seconds of each other. Fastest non-diesel was the Aston Martin Racing Lola with Mucke at the wheel. He was well over 2.5 seconds back. First to break into the 1:09s was Franck Montagny, with a 1:09.961. Then a 1:09.770. It appears as if fast time right now is a combination of car, driver (and the size of their balls) combined not with where they find traffic, but how much traffic they find on their lap. Bryan Willman, (soon to be driving an Audi?) speculates this about the start of the race on Saturday. “I figure the diesels will be accelerating onto the front straight while the tail end of the pack is still braking as come down hill, entering turn 10. They’ll probably be into traffic on their second lap and then the battles will begin and there will be no stopping. It’s going to take some good fortune to stay clean here for the race.” GT(E) continues to be a battle. Half way into the session, it is BMW – BMW – Ferrari – Ferrari – Corvette – Corvette. Stay tuned; that will likely change. Klaus Graf becomes the best non-diesel time so far, breaking into the 1:11 range. He is followed by Kane (20 Dyson Oryx), Fernandez (Aston Martin), Dyson (Dyson) and Jani (Rebellion). In LMPC, Kyle Marcelli was setting the early pace, a second clear of the rest of the field and that continues through the first 40 minutes. P2 is Level 5 at this point – Bouchut over Diaz and it stayed that way until the end. Zak Brown, who’s United Autosport Oak was 4th fastest in the session, commented about his impressions so far about running in P2 – “I’m loving it more than I can afford it.” About 20 minutes to go in the hour session, and Dumas breaks into the 1:09 range and improves yet again with a 1:09.784, just .014 seconds back. In ALMS P1, the 20 with Kane in the car is closing the gap. The Lola Mazda has been slowed this weekend with a restrictor change and also additional weight. According to Guy Smith, “we’re feeling the restrictor more than the weight. The restrictor is hurting us when we’re trying to make a pass. We think we should be able to bet buy, but we’ve lost that extra little bit, meaning we go in side by side into a corner in traffic. I think the regs are headed the wrong direction – they need to make the P1 cars even faster. We need to get back to where we are as fast as Indy cars, like we were a few years ago. As far the weight – we don’t really notice it that much. We’re already running heavy, so we really didn’t change all that much.” As far as the pace increase – maybe we’ll get that next season. We wait for the announcement tomorrow… Bruni – second in GT(E), splitting the BMWs. As far tightness, this isn’t one of the better GT sessions. Only the top 4 are within a second of the fastest time in class. Up front – new fast time. McNish on top by .002 seconds. Just like he planned… Top 3 within .016 seconds. According to Ryan Smith of the ALMS, that should be worth about a 3 foot margin over a lap here. PC ended with Ryan Dalziel heading Ryan Lewis. In GTC, only 4 cars made it out and it was Leh Keen for AJR on top. Right at the end, Davidson tightened things up, joining the 1:09 club, bringing the top 4 all within .115 seconds. GT reverted back to symmetry again – BMW – BMW – Ferrari – Ferrari – Corvette – Corvette. 49 cars went out for this session. Not making it out was 11 (NGT – damaged) 24 (Oak – damaged), 64 (Lotus – damaged),37 (Intersport – withdrawn?), 34 (Green Hornet – withdrawn), 77 (Magnus – same car as raced in the previous session with a different restrictor – will be out for the night session), 10 (Oreca Peugeot - no reason given; no drama either), 26 (Signatech – maybe in the midst of an engine change) and 50 (Larbre – not planned to go out – changed to race engine). If our numbers are correct, that would leave the pack at a realistic 54 cars right now, making some assumptions, based upon the above info. That puts one car on the bubble for the race… Next up – Night Practice. | 
