Le Mans Test Day – Sunday 1
Beautiful Weather – Ready To Go

So what is Tom Chilton up to today, Mike Earle?

“We have a contingency plan: we might try and get Tom here this afternoon.”

The young man is racing at Croft today, in the BTCC, and needs to get his 10 laps in if he is to race later this month – but three races at Croft today, the last one late this afternoon…. Perhaps some lobbying going on?

Everything is settled and ready to go elsewhere – although as usual we’re not expecting any quick laps early on this morning, on what is likely to be a dusty track.

“At Kruse Motorsport, Norbert Siedler was happy and relaxed, for his first time here.

“The Pescarolo chassis is better than last year’s Courage through the quick corners, because of its aerodynamics. But the suspension was swapped over from the C65, so only the monocoque is new.”

09.00 and the Chamberlain-Synergy Lola is first out, with Bob Berridge at the wheel.

Back to Kruse, and Kai himself: “Kumho is pushing really hard they’re always bringing new tyres. Now we are on the 300 mm wide front rims like everyone else, up from 280. At Le Mans last year, (the Kumho-shod) Miracle car could easily do double stints on the tyres, so we’ll be doing that in the race. We haven’t been able to double stint tyres in the 1000 km races.”

The team owner was keen to point out that “we are the only LMP2 team which has finished the last five 1000 km races”. The team’s plan this morning is to send out Jean de Portales and Norbert Siedler to complete their ten laps, then Tony Burgess will complete some laps in the car. This afternoon we will go for some performance running, but qualifying times don’t matter to us.

“The Judd in the car now is a 300 km spec. engine, which will do the test toda and qualifying, then the Nurburgring 100 km. A 5,000 km spec. engine will be fitted on the Friday, for the race here.”

Here are some Aston Martin-on-pit-straight scenes yesterday, as the first cars out complete an installation lap. More from here later this morning.
MC