Petit Le Mans – Friday Morning
More Acura Dramas There was a touch of Groundhog Day about the start of proceedings on Friday morning – the weather was exactly the same as Thursday and the practice session saw a red flag, again caused by the #48 Zytek, being shown very early on in the session. Come to think of it, we had seen a glimpse of Bill Murray at Wrigley Field the previous evening, watching the Cubs getting whupped by the Dodgers. This was destined to be a dramatic hour; and not a little worrying, in that it suggested that the race could be seeing a lot of red flags. As it was, this session came close to resembling a May Day Parade, with four reds inside 35 minutes. The first came a minute into the session when a nose cover came free of the Zytek and had to be recovered; the second at seven minutes, for reasons unknown; and the fourth at 35 minutes, after a tyre delaminated on the #37 Intersport Lola. But it was the third red that was most significant and it resulted from a heavy shunt for the #26 AGR Acura. Jon Field had spun the #37 Lola at Turn 3, causing a following Marc Goossens to slam on the anchors to avoid a collision as the Lola rolled back across the track. Franck Montagny then arrived on the scene to be confronted by the two stationary cars. He was unable to avoid hitting the LG Corvette and was then speared off into the tyre wall, causing extensive damage to the front, left and rear of the ARX-01B. Clearly, the P2 was out for the day and it remained to be seen if it was race-threatening. But even though the first half of the session was all about stoppages, there were other reasons to remember the morning’s activity. Despite all the interruptions – and there were still plenty of local yellows caused by other incidents – three of the four classes saw times lowered further. Dirk Werner started things off by lowering the GT2 best to 1:19.157 in the #87 Farnbacher Loles; Romain Dumas then shaved a smidgeon off the #7 Penske Porsche’s best to finish on 1:07.646; but we would have to wait until the chequered flag to see the P1 time lowered – and then it happened twice. First by Marco Werner, who took the #2 Audi across the line in 1:06.909, but then immediately trounced by Stephane Sarrazin, who went half a second better in the Peugeot – 1:06.398 being the new benchmark. Johannes van Overbeek finished the session standing next to the #46 Flying Lizard Porsche, which had just hit the Turn 10 wall – the manner of his exit strongly suggesting a mechanical issue rather than driver error. Chris Hall had also parked the Primetime Viper on track after the car’s front left exploded. Qualifying was going to be something to look forward to. MH | 
