A very welcome sight this morning at Oulton Park was the Ray Mallock Limited transporter, heralding the re-appearance of the very rapid #55 Lotus Elise of Paul Whight. He had an absolutely enormous ‘off’ in Friday testing, the car hitting the barrier hard backwards on the exit of Druids: “It was the biggest accident I’ve ever had.” The advantages of a state of the art Elise then came to the fore. “There was very heavy damage to the rear of the car with the rear subframes, hubs, mounting points and all the rest destroyed. But RML were already starting to fabricate the replacement parts from their CAD system before we’d loaded the car back on the transporter on Friday afternoon.” With replacement rear bodywork from one of the other Whight family Sport Elises fitted, Whight will be looking to get amongst the GT Cup front runners again. The car will appear once more this season, for the Brands Hatch round of the Championship.

Franck Pelle was looking on as the Point Preparation team worked to find a solution to the very wayward handling of Peter Cook’s #40 turbocharged Porsche 996.

“It’s a real mystery,” said the Frenchman, “we went very well at Silverstone but the car is unmanageable here, bouncing everywhere.” (Peter Cook’s comment is that it is rather like riding a camel!). The car is set to run in GT class spec with larger wheels and a huge rear wing, but with the front aero package run successfully at Silverstone.

“I’ll run in the warm-up session and we’ll make a decision on whether to race after that,” said Pelle. Fingers crossed for a successful morning for the team.

The engine change for the #23 Peninsula TVR was completed overnight but Dennis Leech was still looking glum this morning. “We’re just slow this weekend.” With most of the front of the T400R rebuilt after Graeme Mundy’s Castle Combe shunt it looks like a potentially frustrating weekend for the team.

Brunswick Motorsport’s qualifying woes yesterday were traced to a rather worrying damper problem, as a team insider explained – “Vincenzo spun early on in qualifying, which is why the engine cover came astray. When we got he car back after the session we found that one rear damper had been set to the hardest setting and the other side to the softest. All I can say is that we didn’t set them that way! The fact that Vincenzo set a competitive time despite that is a mark of just how good he is.” Despite the rapid Italian’s efforts, the Brunswick car will start from the back of the grid, Peter Cate having not qualified in the car yesterday, a perhaps odd situation given that he tested here on Friday, although the qualifying session was terminated five minutes earlier than planned.

The brief morning warm up also heralded the news of a five mile queue to get into the circuit: provide the right package, at the right circuit, with the right weather and the fans will come to watch.

The Moslers were two thousandths apart at the top of the times – and then with seconds to go the Ultima (Steven Bardy) went quickest with a 1:42.503. We’ve followed this team during the year with the Aaron Scott Diaries, and it’s pleasing – very pleasing – to see such a small but enthusiastic team achieving such success. The Moslers were very nearly a second slower….the Xero Corvette was only fractions behind the Moslers in fourth, just ahead of the Eclipse and CDL TVRs. Peter Le Bas was enjoying some revised suspension settings and gear ratios in the Corvette - and the suggestion was that the Ultima may not be able to complete 75 minutes with a 'splash and dash'.

It’s going to be a hot 75 minuter for everybody, with the air temperature due to hit 30 degrees during the early afternoon.