ALMS – Generac 500, Road America – Thursday Testing Report
Audis Quickest
© Russell Wittenberg

The sun setting over the Toyota Bridge was a pleasant sight. Even though the cars had stopped running a while ago it was nice to finally be at Road America after a long, long day of air travel. It shouldn’t be that tough, or take that long, to get from Daytona Beach, Fl to Milwaukee, Wi in today’s modern world of air travel. But one delay after another turned a four hour trip into a twelve hour one. So we’ll briefly recap the Thursday session that I missed, thanks Delta, along with a few quotes from the paddock - and start fresh tomorrow.

Audis were quickest, finishing the test session 1-2 (McNish top of the pile), with the Penske Porsches just over a full second behind. Following them neatly in team order were both Dyson Porsches and then the three Acura teams, led by Andretti-Green.

We thought the R10s would do well here and so far that appears to be the case. The Audi camp was happy to be back on top and feel they are making progress with the R10 after a little rough patch through the last few races. They are impressed with the Penske effort this year, both on the track and in the pits. Team Audi Engineer Ron Mathis: “We lost Mid-Ohio in the pits. We beat them on the track but they spent less time in the pits and that cost us the win. We have a lot of good people working really hard on these cars and I think our performance here will show it. We are happy to be here. This track has always been good to the Audi. This is a real race track for real men.”

The P1 entry from Intersport only turned a few laps before having to return to the paddock to fix the nose piece. A brand new nose had just arrived from Creation for the Field car, but some fitment problems cost the team valuable track time. Belated news from the Intersport team is that Craig Dawson (U.K.) has recently joined the team as Engineer. Dawson most recently Engineered Johnny Mowlem's Aston Martin in Speed GT. He joined the team during the Le Mans break and his first duties were testing the Creation here in June. “We had a great test here,” says Dawson, “we found a lot of speed in the car. But that was two races ago and Kuhmo has progressed to an entirely different tire now for this race. So losing that time today really hurt us.”

The battle is already heating up in GT1. The Doran/Lista Maserati is closer to the Corvettes than I think anyone expected. The Doran crew was busy working late on the new piece, learning as they go. Didier Theys exclaimed, “Hey, we are third quickest in class. Yes, the car was good. We were only one second behind the #3 Corvette, so that’s not too bad. We had a little too much understeer and that is what they are working on now.”

Last year’s pole time was in the 1:59s so expect more pace out of the Corvettes tomorrow, especially now that they have some competition. The Ollie car was quickest and Ollie Gavin had these comments: “Our car feels real good. The Maserati is running pretty good, that’s great. It’s nice to have a little competition. The track seemed a little slow today but there is some more speed to come. With a smaller restrictor this year, I don’t know if we’ll be able to get down to last year’s time.”

In GT2 Dirk Mueller set the quickest time in the PW/L Ferrari, with both Risi cars within just tenths of second of his time. Remarkably this is Mueller’s first time driving Road America and he was apparently “grinning from ear to ear” after his first taste of the 4-mile track. Both PW/L and Risi camps were upbeat and happy with their cars and times so far.

The #71 Tafel 997 of Henzler and Liddell retired early with a bad coil pack. Robin Liddell would have liked a little more track time to work on the car but thinks the Ferraris are still going to be faster.

An oil line on the transmission broke sending the #18 Rahal-Letterman Porsche to the garage. The crew was working late to get the car put back together for tomorrow morning, after having to pull the engine to make the repairs.

Quickest non-Ferrari in GT2 was not the Flying Lizards but Joey Hand in the PTG Panoz. Hand: “The guys have been working really hard on the car and it shows. Just a few tenths off the Ferrari on a track this size is pretty good.” Hand and Auberlen will be in the #22 car this weekend in lieu of their usual #21. Apparently the #22 for some unexplained reason has always been “a little more free” than its sister car and they felt that would be an advantage at this track.

Weather forecast looks clear for the weekend so tomorrow should be a great day for practice and qualifying.

Thursday Times
1 1 1 P1 Capello/McNish 1:49.172 Audi / R10 TDI
2 2 2 P1 Pirro/Werner 1:49.579 Audi / R10 TDI
3 1 6 P2 Maassen/Briscoe 1:50.212 Porsche / RS Spyder
4 2 7 P2 Dumas/Bernhard 1:50.833 Porsche / RS Spyder
5 3 16 P2 Wallace/Leitzinger 1:51.893 Porsche / RS Spyder
6 4 20 P2 Dyson/Smith 1:52.067 Porsche / RS Spyder
7 5 26 P2 Herta/Franchitti 1:52.395 Acura / ARX-01a
8 6 9 P2 Brabham/Johansson/Dayton 1:52.688 Acura / ARX-01a
9 7 15 P2 Fernandez/Diaz 1:52.936 Lola / B06-43
10 3 06 P1 Pickett/Graf 1:54.812 Lola B06/10
11 8 8 P2 Bach/Devlin 1:56.529 Lola / B07-46 Mazda
12 4 12 P1 Lewis/McMurry/Willman 1:57.420 Creation / CA06H
13 1 4 GT1 Beretta/Gavin 2:02.240 Corvette / C6.R
14 2 3 GT1 O'Connell/Magnussen 2:03.242 118.245 9 -.--- 30 Corvette / C6.R
15 3 27 GT1 Theys/Lienhard 2:04.499 Maserati MC 12
16 1 31 GT2 Petersen/Mueller/Dumbreck 2:09.492 Ferrari / 430 GT
17 2 62 GT2 Salo/Melo 2:09.585 Ferrari / 430 GT
18 3 61 GT2 Helary/Bruni 2:09.651 Ferrari / 430 GT
19 4 22 GT2 Auberlen/Hand 2:09.776 Panoz / Esperante GTLM
20 5 45 GT2 van Overbeek/Bergmeister 2:10.187 Porsche / 911 GT3 RSR
21 6 71 GT2 Henzler/Liddell 2:10.433 Porsche / 911 GT3 RSR
22 7 44 GT2 Neiman/Pechnik 2:10.472 Porsche / 911 GT3 RSR
23 8 18 GT2 Kelleners/Milner 2:11.476 Porsche / 911 GT3 RSR
24 9 73 GT2 Tafel/Farnbacher/Swartzbaugh 2:12.889 Porsche / 911 GT3 RSR
25 5 37 P1 Field/Field/Berry 2:22.749 Creation / CA06H
26 10 21 GT2 TBA/TBA Panoz / Esperante GTLM
27 11 54 GT2 Pappas/Borcheller Porsche / 911 GT3 RSR

And that was the long and the short of Thursday.