Le Mans Test Day – Saturday
Frantically Catching Up

dsc or Orbit Racing in association with BAM!? It’s been a little frantic here after a late arrival this afternoon. A driver’s briefing at 16.00 meant that drivers weren’t available at precisely the moment we were ready for them. Never mind, there’s plenty of news about.

In the second TVR we have Nigel Greensall (left), Lawrence Tomlinson and Jonathan Coleman. The first two were stars of the second race at Donington Park’s British GT encounter three weeks ago of course, while Jonathan Coleman is even fresher to all this, coming into GT racing from Radicals. His name is already inked in to drive the second RSR TVR in Britain, but the three of them have stepped straight onto the word stage in the second Chamberlain-Synergy car.

Amanda Stretton is proud to announce that she is pregnant. “Yes, baby due in October. It’s just been one thing after another trying to put the ladies car together for Le Mans, but we’ve put that off until 2005 now. Balba Camino was going to be driving here this year, but the Madrid bombing put paid to her plans. Before that it looked as though I was going to manage an all-girl team, but not this year now.”

Greensall, even on his first appearance here, could be fun to watch tomorrow – although he needs to get settled into the updated Chamberlain-Synergy car, which is rather different from the RSR ‘chameleon orange’ TVR.

This item will be a collection of snippets from this afternoon – so how about Clint Field finally appearing here…. after setting off for the airport in the US, and then suddenly realising that he didn’t have his passport?

Radio Le Mans’ Graham Tyler bagged a lift round the bulk of the track with Andy Wallace and Chris Dyson, and was amazed at the detail that Andy came out with a various points on the track. ‘The grip is here on this corner, not there,’ sort of thing – details too precious to release of course. Wallace has spent a lot of years amassing it.

Henri Pescarolo’s team is sitting pretty at the bottom end of the pit-lane, the ‘Bentley’ position from last year.

Scrutineering issues are hard to come by, but the Morgan sailed through, the only work on the car being a precautionary power steering pump change, there being a small doubt over the unit installed.

Petersen / White Lightning, The Racers Group and Orbit / BAM! Are all present with unraced Porsche 911 GT3-RSRs, Kevin Buckler’s being a new chassis for this event, P / WL’s being the car they chose not to race at Sebring, while Orbit / BAM!’s BAM! chassis is a new one to replace the Sebring write-off. More later on BAM!’s Porsche RSR tweaks. The TRG chassis is owned by Danish Porsche importer Lars Nielsen, and he’s looking to race this one in the four LMES events. It was collected fro Porsche on Monday of this week.

As suspected (and wrongly predicted here), the Clan Des Team Dallara is fitted with a Judd engine. Perhaps Mopar parts were returned to ORECA as simply not needed with another team. Apologies for that misleading information. The Judd is badged as an MG in this instance.

All the line-ups are now listed on the Test Day entry. Gunnar Jeannette was found in jovial mood, suspecting that his only partner here will be Renaud Derlot, about whom we know nothing. Jean-Phillippe Belloc had looked as though he was driving an Epsilon Courage earlier this week (with Helary and Boullion), but now he is a Courage Competition car with Marc Goossens and Alexander Frei. Gunnar was very interested to be told that the 2003 C65 won the 675 class at the LM 1000 Km, but the 2004 cars are very different, in particular aerodynamically. How will they fare down the long straights here? We’ll find out tomorrow.

Look at this collection of prototypes....

Tomas Enge has been racing at Imola today (F3000) and will arrive for tomorrow’s action. Colin McRae, Rickard Rydell and Darren Turner spent two hours practising driver changes this afternoon, in the other Prodrive Ferrari.

Paul Daniels was in thoughtful mood this afternoon, as he mentally got ready for his second Le Mans Test Day, and first 24 Hours. He drove a Racers Group Porsche in May last year, “the 2002 Le Mans winner here. We were third reserve last year, and I would have raced for TRG, except that no reserves got in last year.”

Daniels is driving for PK Sport this time of course, but the laps he covered at the 2003 Test Day do not count for this year’s race: he’s got to complete his ten laps tomorrow, to be able to race in June. “This is David’s sixth Le Mans and Jim’s fourth (Warnock and Matthews), so they’re both regarded as qualified drivers. For my benefit and the PK team, it would be nice to get within the 110% time of the fastest car in GT, but I don’t have to set a quick lap tomorrow, just cover ten laps.”

Daniels could be racing for T2M at Monza next month, and is looking to race at Dubai, in the new for ’04 FIA GT event.

Allan McNish was on good form, with plenty of humour present from the Audi Sport UK Team Veloqx squad……..

.. Lehto and Biela were caught greeting each other.....

.... while the Goh Audi guys were in playful mood.

Tom Coronel meanwhile seemed to need a few moments shut-eye, after all the excitement of this week.

The action starts at 09.00 tomorrow. Finally for now, here is the Rollcentre Dallara's rear wing arrangement....

....the Corvette Racing team.....

... and there are now two driver names on the Cirtek Ferrari 360 GTC, not three (no Robert Brooks, reason currently unknown).