Le Mans 24 Hours - Thursday Paddock Notes

The JLOC Lamborghini is still, as at 16:30 only “almost” ready for the fray – They’ll need to be trouble free this evening.

The Pescarolo Judd though is in good shape after Joao Barbosa’s accident coming into the Porsche Curves yesterday evening “It was relatively minor bodywork damage, nothing mechanical,” said the Portugese star

KSM’s Lola had already been back out on track yesterday evening after Jean de Pourtales’s  dramatic looking Dunlop Curve crash – “There was a fair amount of damage to two corners, the floor etc etc”, said Kai Kruse.  The team are now convinced that some late changes to diff settings caught out the driver rather than any mechanical failure, “Jean lifted off and the diff locked up, that was either his fault for not taking care or our fault for not taking him through things carefully enough.”

Down at Virgo Motorsport the team are looking forward to some running this evening after a gearchange glitch during yesterday’s session, Chris Warne also expanded on the Ferrari ‘spats’ required after the scrutineering session for all 10 430GTs – The solution found by the #96 team was adopted by Michelotto for the rest of the grid.  The Spyker meanwhile is now fitted with similar appendages.

Bart and Hugh Hayden were smiling broadly at Speedy Sebah, extolling the virtues of Andrea Bellicchi as the experienced Italian continues to keep youngsters Nicolas Prost and Neel Jani honest – “He’s a typical racing driver, always looking to show what he can do, but he has a very wise head on his shoulders,” said Bart. 

Bellicchi now has a new moniker within the team – dsc can now exclusively reveal that he will henceforth be known as “The Don”

Rob Bell at JMW Motorsport says that the team will be looking to push in this evening’s session: “It’s true to say that qualifying means very little in real terms here but we do need to put the tyres under load, to see how the car feels, responds and lasts when we push it.”

Nigel Moore was unbelievably cool when dsc caught up with him this afternoon:

“The track is mint!” (for anyone over the age of 18 apparently this is a good thing rather than a description of it having a hole in the middle)

“I just did what I was told, did my 10 laps slowly and then Richard got in to get some seat time.  That’s what we all need now, more time in the car, we’ve had about 40 laps each at Silverstone and 10 or 12 at Snetterton.  I am absolutely loving this though.”  

There's been something of a flurry of food poisoning issues for several individuals in the paddock - Radio Le Mans' Joe Bradley missed yesterday's Free Practice session whilst Barazi Epsilon' s Stuart Moseley and Phil Bennett seem to have eaten the same something that disagreed with them - all are fine but a little lighter on their feet - apparently