FIA WEC, 6 Hours of Sao Paulo - Thursday Paddock Notes

Biggest news so far is the replacement of Soheil Ayari at Pecom by Nic Minassian for the remainder of the 2012 WEC.

“I took a call from Amato (Ferrari) last Thursday,” said Nic in the Interlagos paddock this morning, “it was a very straightforward and honest conversation and I have spoken to Soheil since then, he’s a good friend and he said to me that if it hadn’t been me it would have been someone else.  I’m pleased to have these four races for the end of this year and I’m talking to a number of teams about 2013.”

That’s good news for the popular Frenchman who has had a busy but rather fractured 2012 so far encompassing drives for Sebastien Loeb Racing, Pescarolo Sport and Jota thus far this year.

The prospects for seeing a return of the second Gulf Racing Middle East Lola Nissan again this season are good according to a team source, the team have the car here in Brazil and will be hoping to see it back out and racing as soon as possible.

Another Lola team with a spare car in Brazil is Rebellion Racing, the background chatter about spares issues that prompted talk of a change of chassis post Le Mans utterly dismissed by team members here with their pit set-up underlining the “no problems” line on the spares front.

There are a number of changes to driver line up here of course – Roberto Gonzales replaces his brother Riccardo at Greaves (happily the team don’t need to change the cockpit vinyl though!  Luca Moro returns to Lotus LMP2 after his recent injury and Alex Brundle is “absolutely delighted to be here” at OAK.

Fernando Rees at Larbre, an all Brazilian trio at AF Corse in the #61 Am car and Lucas di Grassi in the #2 Audi are providing a substantial local story angle here, not least with their relative performances in the track action this morning, Enrique Bernoldi and Rees filling the top two slots in GTE Am and di Grassis going second fastest in LMP1.

The support series here meanwhile at Interlagos are an all Audi A3 Touring Car race plus a pair of local Porsche GT3 series (Cup and Challenge) the latter seeing the addition of Tracy Krohn to the grid providing additional track time for the Texan and a rare opportunity for him to race a Porsche – His first ALMS start came aboard a PK Sport GT2 car and earlier this year he raced a TRG GTC car at Laguna Seca.      

GG