ALMS, Petit Le Mans - Friday Morning Notes

Contrary To Popular Belief, Today Is Friday, Not Yesterday. 

Thankfully, it appears as if the ugly weather of yesterday is a thing of the past.  Right now, the sky is blue, the temperature is up and life is good – as good as it can be on limited sleep anyway…

Good news for Peugeot – repairs were made to the 07 and both cars are on track for the morning 1-hour session.  Not so good is the situation for Drayson.  The car was stripped down last night, awaiting repairs.  Later today the car will be taken over to Elan for further work – it’s unlikely the car will be out today.

Bad news for the ACS team.  Early in the session, Brandon Davis had a big off, causing extensive damage to the car.  The Robertson team has offered assistance in getting the car back on track – it’s unknown at this time if the car will make it back out.

Libra Racing has been having a fraught couple of days.  Yesterday brought an engine change for the Radical, and the car never did run quite right.  An intermittent miss and an oil leak slowed them last night and the miss today was worse.

Making a welcome return to Autocon is Chris McMurry.  “I just couldn’t stay away.  I was missing it and was becoming quite grumpy at home, so finally my wife to me to get back to driving.”  Well played, Chris.  “At first, even though I was happy with my times, I was lagging behind the car.  That’s not something that you want, especially here, but I’m catching up.”

Very late in the session, in fact just behind the checkered flag, Dindo Capello had an off in the esses, tearing off some front bodywork.

Earlier in the session, it was Audi and Peugeot swapping the fast times, but by the end, the fastest Peugeot (08) was over 2 seconds clear of the fastest Audi.

P2 saw Cytosport fastest, over Dyson.  GT2 was the usual tight group – Corvette, Risi Ferrari, BMW… the top 8 cars were separated by just over 1 second.

Off to the State of the Union …