What about the traffic? Enge’s expression gave it away. “Nightmare. Horrible,” he said. Part of the problem would seem to be the circuit’s many crests and blind corners. It certainly adds to the appeal for the spectator – there are plenty of elevation changes, but too many tight hairpins for Enge’s liking. “Apart from the last corner - that’s very quick - it’s all second gear stuff,” he went on. “But there’s plenty of places where you can get into trouble with the traffic.”

There’s a fairly substantial bump just in the first corner as well, a surface change along with a significant elevation drop. But having had a brief walk around, I have to say it has definite spectator appeal; maybe not on the scale of Spa or Le Mans, but certainly it compares well to other modern facilities. We’ll see whether a crowd arrives come Saturday night, or whether the lure of the beach and the discos keep the undoubtedly many people who are in the Algarve away from the race cars.

Back to the session. Christophe Tinseau improved the time of the no 16 Pescarolo-Judd to 1:33.30, good enough for second. Then at 10:25pm, about half way through the two-hour session, there was a red flag, (for reasons unknown at the time of writing) which interrupted proceedings for around fifteen minutes. At least the Oak Pescarolo of Lahaye had the opportunity to come back at this point.

When the session restarted, the no 16 Pescarolo of Jean-Christophe Boullion was quickly on the pace, setting a 1:32.536 to go second; then, in the last ten minutes of the session, Danny Watts took the Ginetta Zytek out and flew around in 1:32.040 to set the quickest time of the day. So as the chequered flag fell at 11:30pm, it was Ginetta, Pescarolo, Oreca in the top three places, followed by the other Oreca in fourth; with the Audi R10 of Charles Zwolsman (sharing with Andy Meyrick and Narain Karthikeyan) in fifth.

But what of the Aston Martins? The winners of the ‘petrol’ class at Le Mans were, frankly, struggling here in the Algarve, with the cars ending the night practice session in sixth and seventh places. George Howard-Chappell tried to put a brave face on matters: “We obviously don’t know what programmes the other teams were following, so we don’t really know how our pace will match them when it comes to the race,” he said. But then he started to address the real issue: “the problem is that our car doesn’t really suit the requirements of this circuit – it’s too tight and twisty,” he opined. “We have a high-centre of gravity, high-aero car, and that isn’t what you need for here. We know it isn’t going to be easy.”

Another problem for the Astons is the traffic, and according to GH-C, the fact that, in a closed car, you spend a lot of time looking at the ‘A’-pillar. “Particularly in the slow hairpins,” he went on. “It’s going to be a case of keeping out of trouble for as much of the race as we can, and then just seeing how we get on.” I didn’t hear much of a note of optimism in his voice.

In the other classes, Ginetta made it a double with the Quifel-ASM team car of Olivier Pla and local driver Miguel Amaral the quickest of the P2 cars; the Luc Alphand Corvette was the quicker of the two GT1 cars, and the no 77 Felbermayr Porsche of Marc Lieb and Richard Lietz was quickest in GT2, just a hundredth of a second ahead of the Ferrari of Dominik Farnbacher.

Tomorrow, there’s another session of free practice in the afternoon, followed by twenty minutes of qualifying in the evening, when relatively cooler temperatures should encourage some quick laps.

Paul Truswell