LMS Spa - Friday Morning Notes

It’s a beautiful day here at Spa, possibly the first time that sequence of words has ever been used – and, after negotiating the usual cross-Europe drag, another hilariously ‘different’ dsc hotel and a frustrating queue at the Welcome Centre we’re on site at the circuit.

Amongst the entries there are a few significant driver changes – Felipe Ortiz isn’t driving for Creation this weekend, the solo #15 Creation AIM will instead be crewed by the potentially potent combination of Robbie Kerr and Stuart Hall.  Ian Bickerton’s description of how Jamie Campbell-Walter is filling his time whilst recovering from his Monza accident is unpublishable!

Tim Sugden is aboard the JWA Porsche once again following Mikael Forsten’s defection to Rollcentre Racing whilst Iradj Alexander joins the #94 Speedy Garage Spyker squad, the sister #85 car meanwhile features the latest spec Audi engine. “It’s been tested on the dyno and looks good,” said Ralf Kelleners, strolling down the pitlane. “There’s plenty more torque but little difference in the top end.  There’s a lot more to come though.”

Rob Schirle is here, looking after the Strakka Racing Aston Martin, the #61 DBR9 a welcome, if rare, European GT1 entry on Dunlop rubber.

At the Speedy / Sebah LMP2 Lola Coupe base camp Hugh Hayden explained that much of the delay the team suffered at Monza was caused by a broken door catch: “Flat crank V8s do have a lot of vibration and that meant that the catch chattered away at the mounting an eventually refused to close.  It cost us a lot of time but we’re learning fast about what is a very new car.  I’d rather have lost the time at Monza than next month at Le Mans.

The little Lola Coupe came up in a conversation earlier with Aston Martin Racing boss George Howard-Chappell, the #33 car’s pace relative to the Porsche RS Spyders helping to perhaps prove a point on performance balancing –How so?

“Well there is clearly nothing wrong with the balance between the Porsches and the LMP2 Lola, that shows that the basic Lola Coupe is reasonably well matched with the Porsche which is itself quite rightly regarded as a state of the art LMP chassis.

“That leaves an open question as to the balance between the diesel and petrol-fuelled LMP1s, with the Aston powered Lola a clear 2 seconds off the Peugeot’s pace, and the same basic car in LMP2 very much closer to a state of the art chassis, the difference has to be elsewhere.” 

That of course leaves the challenge of how to go forward again with the ACO, the noises on reeling in the diesels are that something will happen in time for next season, with a large distance still between the fastest petrol car and the pace-setting Peugeots that seems to be an essential move if the desired influx of factory efforts is to come to swift fruition.