Rollcentre at Le Mans - Day Two

Wednesday Qualifying

With scrutineering and the picturesque town centre well and truly behind the team, Wednesday was the first meaningful day of the week at the Circuit des 24 Heures.

The morning was mainly set aside for making sure everything was prepared to the highest possible standards, from the markings on the pitlane surface for where the car is to stop, to ensuring that everything in the garage was allocated a space. When the stakes are as high as they are in this race, there is no excuse for clutter and chaos, not that Martin Short is the type of person to allow that in any circumstances. Rollcentre capitalised on the relative calm of the afternoon by carrying out practice pit stops. Everyone must know exactly where to stand, where to have the tyres ready and how they will work and co-ordinate their activities with everyone else in the team. It is amazing how much quicker the crew were after just two or three practice attempts and nervous laughter at early mistakes was soon replaced with confident smiles.

Other important jobs included a seat-fitting for Joao Barbosa, which gave Joao a chance to make himself comfortable - and Rob a chance to wear rubber gloves….. and tickle Joao.

The format for Wednesday and Thursday comprises a two hour session starting at 7pm and then another two hour period at 10pm.

Martin Short was obviously itching to be out there at the start of the first session and went for one complete timed lap, 4:16.688, before pitting and then doing a series of in and out laps. “We have brand new aero and suspension so we were doing set-up work and just testing really, at the start of the session. The car was porpoising really badly at 180ish, so I had to do a few more changes. I also had a little bit of understeer on some settings, but I never thought in my racing days I would be complaining to my race engineer about understeer in the Porsche Curves, because I never thought I would be going this fast!”

Finally Martin decided to go for a time and show everyone what the car could do, and the 3:46.648 looked good. Despite being ‘only’ ninth on the grid it was more importantly only five seconds off pole, with the Audis, Domes and a Pescarolo ahead. “I was having problems with the dashboard so had to ask the crew what my time was, and they said 46, so I thought I was being a slow old tugger - but then when they told me I was only five seconds off I was pleasantly surprised, especially as the car was not perfect and it wasn’t an all out lap and it was on old tyres. We are looking good and I am looking forward to seeing how the two quick guys can go.”

Rob Barff indeed chipped Martin’s time down and lastly Joao Barbosa went out with some different aero settings. It seemed to be the right choice as Joao’s 3:41.854 bumped them up the provisional grid to seventh. The Zytek had a last minute improvement to demote Rollcentre to eighth but it was certainly a very encouraging first hour and half. “LMP1s are not easy cars to set up, but the mechanical grip from the chassis is just mega. There are definitely a few seconds to come, at least, and then we still have to try qualifiers,” said Rob Barff.

Joao could certainly see room for improvement: “I couldn’t see at Indianapolis or the Porsche Curves because it was porpoising so badly. All in all though I am happy with where we are now and it is a good step but I think we can improve quite considerably in the night practice and tomorrow.”

Martin had to get very technical with the crew in between sessions. “By balancing the front end a bit more I thought it might make the porpoising worse, so we now need to change the settings before the second qualifying session, send Joao out and do one lap on the revised settings. If he is happy he will come in and switch to qualifiers but you have to be really careful on your out lap and even then you only get one shot, then they are finished. If he isn’t happy with the car on his out lap, he will have to do another and give us some idea of which direction to go set-up-wise before we put the qualifiers on. It’s hard to explain, but I know what I am doing!”

The time had to be set in the narrow ‘window’ when there was some daylight left, because after that it was all about getting used to driving into the pitch black of night: that would take enough concentration on its own, never mind trying to ‘ace’ every single bend of the 13.65 kilometre circuit.

With set-up changes complete, Joao was lined up at the end of the pit lane at ten o’clock: there was not much light and the ‘window’ was rapidly closing. Temperatures were falling off though, but were still high at over 27 degrees. Here was Rollcentre’s shot at a quick lap, and those qualies would be going on in the first fifteen minutes of the session whatever happened.

Joao seemed happy enough on his out lap and was straight back in to put the qualies on and go for it - all Rollcentre eyes were on the timing screen, which duly reported Barbosa’s 3:39.260 - seventh on the grid. With stormy weather forecast now for tomorrow evening, it seems that Rollcentre could start its first ever Le Mans from the front of the fourth row. Very impressive.

Rob also gave the car a double thumbs up after his five laps, and Martin Short took the car out for a final five laps, to complete the car’s 40 laps of running this evening.

“We found the low downforce setting gave us a really nice balance and it was very comfortable, yet we still had good front end grip. After Joao’s time we scrubbed two sets of tyres in and got all three drivers qualified. I was thinking of going for another time at about quarter to midnight, but the car was so nice to drive I thought I didn’t want to take any more risks, especially as lots of cars seemed to be getting punctures. It is a good race set-up - absolutely spot on to drive: I followed the Zytek and an Audi for three quarters of a lap and was hanging on to them, and I might even have been a bit better than them on the slower stuff. Now the gearbox, suspension and engine all being sorted out for the race, so if it stays dry we might be pipped in Thursday’s qualifying, but it doesn’t matter. One row back on the grid won’t make any different to the result, or my or the team’s ego.”
Paul Slinger