ALMS, Detroit – Friday Morning Report
Wet, Wet, Wet

For a series that promotes relevance, it has to be said that the morning session is all about irrelevance.  It’s nothing but rain for the first session.  Looks like Mosport weather caught up with us…  The forecast calls for clearing later today, so this session looks as if it’s a wash.

As far as Ryan Briscoe replacing Sascha Maassen; according to Andy Schupak of Porsche, this is only for this race.  Nothing further has been decided, although it has already been announced that Briscoe will be in the car at Petit.  It was just time to try something different.

Just a warning – if this report is short, it’s because the day also includes press conferences for Acura/Honda and what is not stated as, but in actuality is, the Corsa announcement.  “Introducing the world’s first modern era electric hybrid race car” is what the flyer says.  I guess “Sparky”, the Panoz, is not of the modern era…

OK, on the track, some of the cars are going around.  They are wet and they are slow.  Last year, pole was a 1:13.357, set by Briscoe in the Penske Porsche and GT2 pole was set at 1:24.586, by Gianmaria Bruni in the #61 Risi.

An hour into the session, the rain appears to have stopped, but the track is still wet.  GT2 at that time sees the unusual placing of Drayson-Barwell fastest, followed by the Pappas Ford GT and then the PTG Panoz.

The session has been relatively incident free, with Andrea Robertson and Chris Dyson both having minor encounters with the tires.  Paul Drayson was also forced to take to an exit road in his Aston

The pavement appears to be drying as we near the end of the session, so effectively the ALMS cars have done a pretty good job of drying the track out for the Indy cars.

Unusually, the #87 Farnbacher-Loles Porsche is on the timing and scoring screens, but the car actually isn’t here.  If it turns a time, then I’ll be concerned.

As the session winds down, the racing line is almost completely dry, but there is still some standing water off line.

At the checkered flag, all cars entered except the #37 Intersport, the #62 Risi and the #3 Corvette made it out on track.  Oh, thankfully the Farnbacher-Loles Porsche did not record a time.

Back later, with something relevant, hopefully…

Gary Horrocks