Le Mans Series – 8 Hours Of Le Castellet – Friday Free Practice 2

The second hour-long practice session commenced at 16:20 local time under hazier skies than this morning, but conditions were still extremely pleasant.

The Oreca AIM was still without engine and gearbox however, which had been removed from the car and were still being taken apart in the paddock.  Participation tomorrow clearly the current aim for the #6 car. 

Ominously the #24 Oak car was still yet to set a lap time and not on track and the #13 Rebellion car was also a no-show due to “a mechanical engine issue, hopefully minor, but we’re not expecting to go out in this session.”  The Rebellion’s manifold cover was noted (by Radio Le Mans’ Graham Tyler) as having been removed during the early part of the session.  In fact they did go out briefly, just at the end, to complete a solitary lap, seemingly without drama.  “I think it’s fixed” said a spannerman “well, it got round so we’re halfway there!” 

The Kruse car failed to set a proper time so clearly all has not been well with them today, a seething Kai Kruse “we’ve been let down badly by gearbox supplier OBR who sold us a gearbox system they said was bulletproof and tried and tested with the Lola chassis, this has proven not to be the case.” 

#24 did appear in the dying minutes with a new engine and was running at a reasonable pace.

So to the lappery.  Sarrazin was soon down to similar times to the Peugeot’s best this morning and then Capello came in with a 1:43.543 for the fastest time of the weekend so far.  The much-anticipated Audi and Peugeot fight was coming to the boil.  Hopefully this will be a plotline that will reach a head towards 19:00 on Sunday, but for now the two were trading fastest sector times at the top of P1 and sat just 0.2 seconds apart coming up to halfway through the session.  Capello was making the biggest gains initially though, improving to a 1:43.348, then a 1:43.239 as the Peugeot sat in the pits.

Strakka, Quifel and RML were top of P2 again, Pla mixing it with the P1s with a 1:47.722.  “We still have work to do with the new aero and we have got further work to do on set-up.  We are feeling the difference with the new aero package, now we need to understand what we can do with it.” 
Further great news for Ginetta and for Bruichladdich too as they moved up to third in class at RML’s expense.  Whilst they were pipped out of the top three by just 1/10th of a second in the dying moments by the #35 Oak Pescarolo, this still rounded off a good day for the team.  Tim Greaves
“we’re still getting used to what the car does and doesn’t do as drivers and [the engineer] is still learning the car too.  We did do the test here but it was not helpful as it was so cold and we have tested at Snetterton since but that was very cold too.  Now we’re learning so we’re happy with today.”  Karim Ojjeh was also a satisfied man.  “If it stays like that and the others can’t improve much then we’re strong.  We have one little issue that I think we can fix but the car is quick and feels comfortable too.”  Series debutant Thor-Christian Ebbesvik set this afternoon’s time even though he was “just learning the new car and a totally new championship, this is very different to what I am used to.  In the last session we got some more speed in the car and myself so it’s looking better.  I can’t tell you which way we are going with downforce but it’s all about fine tuning what we can lose or gain on the straights.  We certainly took a major step in the right direction this afternoon.”

GT2 was too close to call across the whole pack again, but the BMW was now setting more representative and competitive times.  Advantage Ferrari at the halfway point, Russo’s 1:58.925 from Melo and Kirkaldy showing that team-mate’s Mullen’s pace this morning was not simply a question of tyres, though clearly that had given them the ‘edge’.  Bell then brought the Aston Martin in to the top three to break the 430s’ stranglehold.
Not much mention of FLM to date, these cars blending with the slowest of the P2s at the sharp edge (Applewood Seven’s #49 Gulf-liveried car the class act so far) and falling amongst the fastest GT2s at the other end (#46 JMB, again in both sessions). 

Into the last 15 minutes and Sarazzin came out of the pits with a clear statement of intent.  Two out of three fastest sectors and a bit of baulking at Pif-Paf and even entering the pits (!) still put him quickest with a 1:43.152.  After some deliberation in the press room, we can’t accept that this was indeed the case, not least because he was showing with a fastest second sector at ’30.9’, whereas no less than 24 cars managed to beat that by the end of the session.  Still, that was the time that #4 was credited with.  This wasn’t good enough to head Audi’s McNish who posted a 1:42.801 on his last full-steamer just as the chequered flag fell.  Both cars seem to have more to come, tomorrow should be interesting.  Significantly, comparing the best sectors throughout the session leaves the Peugeot a clear half-second ahead though, with a theoretical best lap of 1:42.166 to Audi’s 1:42.696.  It still seems to be advantage Peugeot, unless Audi still have things up their sleeve.

In terms of real, attained laptimes, AMR was next up overall but 1.8 seconds down on the diesel pace.  Greg Mansell was only 0.2 seconds further back manifesting a stronger show from Beechdean Mansell this afternoon once early porpoising issues had been resolved.

Lietz took his Porsche fastest in GT2 with a 1:58.713 so this class certainly remains wide open, especially considering there are another 8 GT2s within 1.2 seconds of his time.  Looked at another way, only four cars were over 2:00 by the end of the session.  Whilst the BMW was one of these four, Muller was very keen to stress that “this is a very new car, we’ve just done a few kilometres at Salzburg before we came here.  We need track time, in particular to adapt to the new suspension which was required by the ACO.”

The most significant speed trap figure change this afternoon, compared with this morning, was the #12 Rebellion entry going 11kph faster.  The team had predicted a higher top speed having removed downforce.  The four other improvements of 3kph or greater were as follows:

#009 Signature Lola Aston Martin +4 kph
# 77 Felbermayr Porsche +4kph
#91 CRS Ferrari +4kph
#75 Prospeed Porsche +3

The first day of a new season is usually full of intrigue and interest and on the basis of today’s showing we seem to have plenty to look forward to over the rest of this weekend. But the diesels still look ominously quick AND they have the fuel consumption advantage too.

PS