Le Mans Series - Algarve - Friday Morning Notes

Apologies – a major hardware failure left dsc offline this morning

We’re back up to a heady 32 entries – Pegasus Racing are present with their Courage!

Rebellion’s estimate is that the 4% increase will give the cars 20-25 extra bhp BUT there is a commensurate cost in terms of fuel consumption which might cost the cars a lap per stint – There’s number crunching aplenty going on at present, all courtesy of a very late announcement of the change, with a huge amount of work required by both the team and by Judd.

There’s puzzlement as to why all of a sudden the ACO have chosen to speed up the petrol cars rather than reel in the diesels (particularly bearing in mind the fact that the ‘3:30 rule’ at Le mans was blown into the weeds this year– Have the manufacturers been involved in this decision making process?

BMW’s absence is indeed explained by a need to prepare for the Spa 24 Hours, the team had only two raceable cars at Le Mans (plus a part complete spare) and have since lost the Art Car (which is now, of course, a museum piece.

Vanina Ickx is added to the Signature Plus Lola Aston roster too and Spyker revert to their 2010 Le Mans Series red and black livery.

The first hour long track session starting at midday saw the early running made by Stephane Sarrazin in the Peugeot (the #4 Oreca car with a different chassis this weekend).

The Peugeot was though headed, albeit briefly, by Danny Watts in the Strakka HPD (into the 1:36s) before Sarrazin banged in the first of several laps in the 1:33s

There was early trouble for Franck Mailleux in the #008 Lola Aston, the car stopping out on circuit before being recovered to pit entry by mid session.  The team diagnosed a minor electrical problem post-session and also confirmed that they are running the new restrictors.

Trouble too for the #40 Quifel ASM Ginetta Zytek, Pla pitting early on with a gearbox actuator problem – session over, a real blow as the team have a new lighter evolution of the Zytek V8, part of the programme to develop the 2011 LMP1 spec engine.

No sign in the session of the #89 Hankook Farnbacher Ferrari – Perhaps the team are still celebrating their confirmed Le Mans podium?  Nope, the car suffered a clutch problem on start up for the session after performing perfectly this morning.  Horst Farnbacher though was most unhappy at receiving their race engine back from the ACO only last Friday as the team were preparing to leave for this race.

Andrea Belicchi was soon down into the 1:34s (on old spec restrictors – 1.3 seconds the gap to the Peugeot by midway through the session.)  That time though was bettered by Nicolas Prost, getting the gap to the Pug down to a second in the #12 Rebellion.

Both Rebellions improved throughout the session but Panis, on his very last lap of the session popped in a 1:32.878 to leave the gap at the flag at 1.661 seconds.

Guillaume Moreau bettered Watts’ LMP2 time by a tenth as the session entered its final quarter.

Ferrari led the way in GT2, the #95 car posting a 1:46.099, almost half a second up on a chasing pack led by a trio of Porsche’s – Henzler in the #88 Felbermayr Proton car ahead of Lietz in the sister #77 car and Pilet in the #76 IMSA Performance car.  Gimmi Bruni got amongt that little lot in the latter part of the session though in the #96 AF Corse Ferrari.

Rob Bell was next up in the #92 JMW Aston with Marco Holzer also in the 1:46s in the #75 Prospeed Porsche.

In FLM there were spins galore but Damien Toulemonde posted a top ten time overall in the #49 Applewood Seven car.  That was bettered though in the dying minutes by Nico Verdonck in the #48 Hope Polevision car, 1:41.714 quicker by one thousandth of a second!!  Warren Hughes and Jody Firth were surprised by the differences between the LMP2 cars they’ve pedalled before and the FLM car they have here as an opportunity to dial Jody Firth in for 2011 – Might there be a potential change of plan to come?  We’ll see.