Le Mans Series – 8 Hours of Le Castellet – Sunday – Pre-Race

Paddock People

Hugues de Chaunac

“There is no real difficulty in running such different cars because in reality this is two completely separate teams this weekend, with separate engineers.  We are happy with both cars now, the engine problem [on #6] is behind us and we have not had any more problems.”

So would the Peugeot have been able to match #6’s best 3rd sector in qualifying?  Oreca could surely answer this question with the reams of data they had from both cars.  “It’s difficult to say, we have different settings on the two cars, different tyres, different engines, so it’s difficult to say, a comparison is difficult to do.  We have to run Michelin tyres on the Peugeot, the two companies have very strong connections.  We will take a decision about entering #6 at Spa in the coming week.”

Signature men Franck Mailleux and Pierre Ragues

FM: “It’s been OK, we’ve a lot to learn.  It’s a very big car for us to run as a private team so even in four days here it’s not enough for us to gather the information we need.  The test here was no real use as it was so cold and we had two days at Magny Cours but that was wet, dry, wet, dry.  We don’t have the Michelins of the AMR team so it’s difficult for us to share information with them.  It is a difficult car to drive in traffic, it is very fast but it’s hard to see, it’s quite heavy with a full tank and difficult to drive at the limit.  In qualifying Pierre was trying a different set-up and it was not the best, it was really oversteery.  It will be much more comfortable in the race and I think we will be quicker in the next few races.”

Ragues confirmed that qualifying had been rather fraught “but this morning with the temperatures lower the tyres were much better and we have a better set-up and I think we’ll be OK for the race.  I think the times will be good.  I only did an out and in this morning but yesterday the track temperature was in the 30’s and we are really learning the Dunlop tyres which are very different to the Michelins (on the works AMR car).  We want to have a good result in the ‘essence’ (petrol) class but it’s the first race so we don’t know too well where we are.”

GT1

Larbre’s Patrice Goueslard was overseeing the removal of some battered panels along the entire right hand side of the Saleen, hoping the damage was as superficial as it looked.  “A prototype hit me in the du Beausset (double right) corner.  I saw two of them in the rear view screen so I ‘opened the door’ at the beginning of the corner and the first passed me easy and the second arrived, I think he had missed his braking point because I was even outside of the circuit when he hit me on the right hand side.  I don’t know who it was, an open prototype, so I want to watch the footage.  It turned the car round and I hit the tyres with the right hand side of the car.

Beechdean Mansell

Greg confirmed that “Dad was out this morning and the engine just stopped, we think it might be a fuel line so it’s good that it happened now.  We have a good set-up now and it’s looking good.”  So reports of a prototype trailing fire in warm-up are likely to lead back to this incident.

IMSA’s Raymond Narac and Patrick Pilet have been relatively low profile in terms of times this weekend (not that anyone in GT2 has ever been far off anyone else) but they were brimming with confidence after warm-up.  Pilet confirmed that “the car is fast for the race, maybe not for qualifying.  Qualifying was very close and we had some small problems with traffic.  I didn’t want to do 5 or 6 laps on new tyres because you want to keep as much as possible.  If we have a yellow flag, it will be in the first hour because it is close and it is the first race of the year so it could be a little crazy.  If you have a safety car then you can save some fuel but you also have to think about saving the tyres as much as possible and 5 or 6 laps of grip might be important at the end.  The car is really good in the race set-up, you can see the results from this morning [2nd in class], I think we have a good strategy and use of tyres in qualifying so I think we can expect a good race.

For me GT2 is the best class.  It’s a lot cheaper than GT1 to build and the performance and technology is the same.  I think the FIA need to change their philosophy.  It’s a big field with a lot of manufacturers and you can see the level that we have here, it’s incredible.  The crazy thing is the GT3’s because you can do whatever you want to the cars and they just go faster and faster.”

Stefan Mucke on #009’s varying downforce levels through the weekend.  “We have tried different configurations for sure but we are running low downforce for the race. Yes, it’s to get data for Le Mans, that is the important thing because we have the big straight and some similar corners, but also we think that it’s the best choice for the race because getting through the traffic will be much easier.  Over a lap it may be slower, but over a stint we think it will be faster.”  So would it be 1500km of racing with a drag race every lap?  “Yes, I think it will.”

Dirk Werner “Yes we were quickest in warm-up and it’s a bit of an improvement in the car from yesterday buts it’s not a huge step.  I think we were the only one’s trying to see what the performance is, everyone else treated the session different to us.  I can’t see us being the fastest in the race, we still have such a lot to learn on the car and we aren’t even yet comfortable with the set-up.  The half second improvement in qualifying was more than simply trying hard but we still need some big steps yet.”

JMW had a continuation of a weekend long brake issue in warm-up.

Marc Lieb was relishing “the challenge of this season.  We saw it at Sebring and we knew it before we got here that it was going to be tough.  This will be the class to watch in LMS.  We always try to give 100% and be the best of everyone out there.  We need to keep moving forward and we cannot afford any mistakes. The extra points for using just one engine and points for qualifying and all these little things they’ve added are making things more important this year.  You have to make a 100% job every time, the team, the drivers, the engineers.  Everyone will do some mistakes through the season and it will be very close.  The Melo/Bruni car is a little bit ahead, as we saw at Sebring and it is a little bit quicker than us at the moment but we’re working on that.  We thought we would be further off, especially when we saw the new wider front come in on the Ferrari in FIA’s last year.  It doesn’t suit us that much here, it’s Ferrari-land so we’re really happy so far.”

Some perspective on that Strakka qualifying performance.  Warren Hughes “I thought it had a second on us but not the other second.  But we’ve got a new low downforce package here and it’s so new we haven’t got the most out of it.  We will for Le Mans.  Anyway, our car is particularly good on high downforce tracks (suggesting ASM will be more competitive on shorter circuits) I also don’t think that Strakka will be that dominant in the race.”

Mike Newton said “it’s very early doors with our Lola-HPD package and we had a problem in qualifying which returned in the warm-up.  If we can solve that we’ve got three consistent drivers – and we’ve beaten faster cars in the past!”

John Hartshorne on why he’s not in a JMB GT2 Ferrari here “The series-enforced pro-am in  P2 but not in GT2.  The amateur driver hasn’t got a cat in hells chance against this lot.  So I looked at a budget in P2 and it’s enormous so I’m doing FLM this weekend.”

The cars are on the grid now and we have reports on a line of oil at the end of the Mistral straight, all the way through Signe.  We’re not sure if this is from a car on its way out to the grid or from the F3 race a few moments ago. Either way the sun is behind high cloud so its rather cooler than for the past two days.

PS and MCC