Le Mans Series – 8 Hours of Le Castellet – Friday Morning 3

Guy Smith was look forward to jumping into his Rebellion Racing racesuit and aboard the very striking #13 Lola.  This is the 2009 chassis with, obviously, revised engine mounts for the Rebellion V10, plus revised suspension and pick-up points, to exactly match the brand new 2010 #12 chassis.

“I’m really impressed with the team, they seem very organised and the professional way Bart [Hayden] is leading the team is second to none.  He’s top class and if you haven’t got what he has then you won’t get to the top in P1.  It’s hard to know where we’ll be and especially what the pace of the diesels will be.  The reality is that what they’ve lost in power, which seems to be the case from Sebring, they’ll have gained in economy.  It’ll be worth about one less stop in an LMS race and as many as 4 less stops at Le Mans if that’s the way to choose to play it.”

Hugh Hayden’s outlook upon the race and season ahead seemed similar, but subtly different to his thoughts during 2009.  He’s always wanted to win, but now...

“We want the Audi to go to hell for leather and push the Peugeot on Sunday, but we’re not out to win a privateer (petrol) class.  We want to win overall.” 

There’s huge confidence in ‘his’ team, personnel, drivers and cars – and they do look like winners.  #13 race engineer Steve Wills is undertaking some development electronics work on ‘his’ car, while the two sets of drivers are adjusting their cars in different ways and not quite coming back to the same settings.  The youngsters in #12 look at a different set-up than the more experienced chaps in #13. 

Warren Hughes was as ever delighted to be back, albeit with limited running at the test day and an all new aero package on the Quifel Ginetta-Zytek today he is expecting a steady rather than spectacular start.

“Oliver [Pla] will do most of the first session because he is very familiar with the car and will know the most about the changes and what we might need to do.  It’s certainly a big effort.  I’m pleased that we’ve got track temperature today because the test was weird, with temperatures so low.  The car was quick but it always felt unusual.  It’s going to be interesting to see where we stack up, especially in terms of the Acura chassis and the RML car.  I don’t really pay much attention to what the competition are doing, as long as we look after ourselves and keep out of the pits then we should be fine.”

In GT, we’re advised that at the test day all the Ferraris, and possibly Porsches too, were running engines at less than absolute performance, but even so the AF Corse cars were pulling away from the rest.  That is likely to be a similar situation this weekend... but faster.  Speed trap figures ought to be very interesting.

Speed trap numbers will be of great interest to the JMW team with their Aston Martin too.  For the first time, JMW have the “pukka 2010 engine” rather than, at the test, the engine from the Prodrive test car.  “The full 2010-spec car is now complete” summarised Rob Bell.  “It’s all a trip into the unknown for us in terms of reliability and performance, but as a true development partner [with Dunlop and Aston Martin], this is what’s it all about.  It’s a bit of a ‘shot in the arm’ for me too. We’ve come here with the tyres we had at the test, but after this race, we go to Hungary to develop the Dunlops for the next part of the year.”

With just the Aston Martin and the BMW on Dunlops in GT, both teams are getting a lot of attention, but Graham Shuter at Dunlop remarked that they’re “only a small company” and with considerable attention being paid to prototype rubber “we're happy with two in GT2.”

The rubber situation in the P classes is going to be one of the stories of the race: more on that in due course.

PS and MCC