Le Mans
1000 Km – Friday – 'Scrutineering' Report
”A Good Thraipsing”
John Graham
is always interesting to listen to: he was the first driver we stumbled
across this morning at scrutineering – at a new venue, on
the Le Mans city ring road – a building usually used for car
auctions (by the look of things).
“Here’s
an idea for you media types. Why not have the European races in
the winter – at say Paul Ricard, Jarama and somewhere in Italy.
Now if I was able to say to my wife…’Honey, we’ve
got to spend some of the winter in the south of France…’
Do you think she’d be pleased?
“Jon (Field) is
here because he can go racing, at Le Mans, during what is otherwise
the off-season. But look at the calendar now: no ALMS races from
October to March, then a gap until after Le Mans. Most of our season
is from late June to October. Let’s carry on in Europe after
that, preferably somewhere warmer than where we’re standing
now.”
R&S partner Rick
Sutherland agreed. “All the North American guys are sitting
around wondering what they can do for the winter. We can’t
be in two places at one time…”
John Graham again: “Think
of the North American teams that survive because they do a good
job running drivers with budgets. This would help them by keeping
them busy most of the year, and not allow them to get distracted
by other races.
“We could race
in November, December and January in southern Europe, then Sebring
in March, back to Europe for the Le Mans Test Day, another European
race then Le Mans, then back to North America for the rest of the
ALMS.
“At the moment,
all I can think of is what a long winter we have ahead.”
Interesting John, and
definite food for thought.
Now, back to the Le Mans
1000 Km. “We’re eighth quickest in the Intersport R&S,
and it’s a help to me that the engine and gearbox are the
same as in the Panoz. There’s a very relaxed atmosphere in
the team, which works very well. There are going to be three or
four teams fighting for second place in the race. We’re going
to be in the gaggle in the next group.
“I will be racing
in ALMS prototype next year,” concluded John Graham.
So a wide open prototype
race on Sunday – we hope (with the Audi the favourite, but
the Pescarolo Courage was apparently quicker yesterday).
The Saleen was
one of the earlier cars at scrutineering this morning and the driver
lineup is Konrad / Seiler / Kaufmann. “Franz phoned me at
8 o’clock yesterday evening,” explained Wolfgang. “I
set off at 2 a.m. from Germany and arrived here at 8 this morning.
I had croissants for breakfast and met the team hours before they
expected to see me.
“I last raced here
on the Bugatti circuit in 2001, so I’ll check to see what
changes they have made to the circuit. Franz tells me that he did
a 1:37-something yesterday and we’re told that the Prodrive
Ferraris did 1:36.5. I saw how well the Saleen went at Anderstorp
where it was also very slippery. The Saleen has very good traction
and Franz and the engineers really know what they are doing. I’m
a bit worried though because we’ve got 30 minutes of free
practice tomorrow and then qualifying.”
Andy Wallace turned out
to be in the same boat. . . .
Tim
Sugden is “really enjoying driving the 550. I’ve got
a problem with the seat position because the wheel is too close
to me. These other guys must have really short arms, But the gearbox
is incredible and the whole car is user friendly [traction control,
power steering] and the only problem I’ve got is with the
brakes. You have to press the pedal very hard, but I like to be
very precise heel and toeing. Some of the other guys brake with
their left foot so they can really stand on the pedal. I struggled
to press it hard enough.”
Tim Sugden was still
very upset by the death of Steve O’Rourke. He’ll pay
his respects next week.
Pete Le Bas was on fine
form—at least until he found about the scrutineering issues
of the Corvette. He persuaded a member of the ACO to take him around
the circuit yesterday, but Monsieur ACO was alert to the dangers
of the Irishman driving his Renault and declined to let Mr. Oversteer
take the wheel. “So I took my rental car out for ten laps.
The hubcaps took a bit of a bashing against the kerbs.
“I
did a 1:49 in my first flying lap in the Corvette and got that down
to a 1:46 straight away. Amanda Stretton saw me approach the Dunlop
Chicane and was very impressed with my turn in speed. . . but I
didn’t make it through without spinning. I had a tear in my
eye the first time I turned onto the pit straight at this place.”
It was tears of a different
sort later in the day.
Eddie Hinckley has seen
it all before. But here he was with the Veloqx Care Racing Ferraris.
He felt that they were the favourites of course, but was anything
but complacent. NB. Both 550s are fitted with pitot tubes.
Sandwiched between
the two Veloqx 550s at scrutineering was the #30 Scuderia Ecosse
Ferrari 360 Modena, together with its (potentially) four drivers.
The team may be new to the GT scene, but the talent and experience
involved – with Ferrari and at Le Mans – indicates that
this is a serious project.
Marino Franchitti
(right above, with Tim Mullen on the left) is well known to dsc
readers on both sides of the pond and is delighted to get back in
the driver’s seat after a frustrating year – this is
his first race since Sebring. “I’ve spent the last seven
months keeping fit and talking to various people about 2004. The
damage to the (Rizi Competizione) car at Sebring took five months
to repair, and by then we had missed everything. I’ve only
driven 20 laps (of the Bugatti Circuit) here so far, but it’s
just heaven to be back behind the wheel after so long,” the
young Scot explained.
Alongside him are Lewis
Carter and Chris Niarchos, the winner and runner-up respectively
of the UK Ferrari Challenge in 2003. Also present is former Veloqx
GTO driver Tim Mullen who explained his role thus; “The team
asked me to be here to test the car and help get up to speed quickly,
and I’ll help as much as I can. They want me to race but the
lineup was decided a long time ago. I’m still waiting to find
out if I’m driving tomorrow.”
Another familiar face
is that of crew chief Vince Moutrille, who brings with him a wealth
of Le Mans experience gained with (amongst others) Cadillac, Prodrive
and, most recently, NASAMAX. He explained that this is the first
time that the full team had worked together and that this is very
much an evaluation exercise for 2004. FIA NGT would appear to be
the logical route.
With no running on-track
today, the team was one of the few undertaking any activity in a
very quiet pitlane, using the time to check seat and belt fittings.
The car is beautifully presented and we will follow their progress
this weekend with interest.
In the Lister garage,
it was a case of throwing more and more effort at the Storm LMP
– with increasingly satisfying result. “We missed running
on Tuesday,” said JC-W, “because Laurence was at an
FIA GT Technical meeting in Paris. But Wednesday went really well,
and we completed about 65 laps. Yesterday was frustrating though:
we had a problem with the brake master cylinder, which the guys
fixed before the end of the session, but then we had a long pedal.
That confused us all, but it turned out that a plate we’d
fitted to allow Tom (Coronel) to rest his heel had altered the brake
ratio to the master cylinder, and once we took it off, the brakes
were fine.
“We want slight
understeer everywhere, but we’ve got that on some corners
but turn-in oversteer on others, which is making driving a little
more difficult than it should be.
“Laurence is like
a man on a mission with this engine. He won’t stop until he’s
got the power that he wants and he’s promised us 60 more reliable
horsepower for a Christmas present. “
Tom Coronel was having
a great time in the Lister. “The car is really easy to drive,
especially under braking. So you can brake so late but it is still
easy to control. The car is unbelievably ugly, but it is so ugly
that it is beautiful. And it’s fun factor is very high. “
The Lister should
start it’s first race from a grid on Sunday.
The all-important question:
Did Andy Wallace reach 146 mph in his Audi A3 Turbo Diesel on the
way to Le Mans?
“No, I didn’t
make it. The temperature was 16.5 degrees, which is the same as
coming down for the test day. So I did a 144.5 mph again. “
A quick bit
of calculator work and Andy arrived at the fuel consumption of 39.2
mpg. “And I gave it a really good thraipsing.”
We hadn’t come
across the verb ‘to thraipse’ before, and had to check
the spelling with AW.
Andy did two laps of
the track yesterday, on foot. He nearly wore out a pair of shoes
testing the grip of the track and we’ll bring his conclusions
next week. This is how you get to be this good.
“Jan decided that
we wouldn’t run yesterday in order to save money.”
These are the Dyson Racing
definitions for different levels of understeer:
Understeer
Terminal Understeer
Black Jungle Understeer
Italian Gay Bar Understeer.
Yes, racing
in the ALMS is a whole lot of fun with these guys around. The Le
Mans pitlane had that same friendly feel about it this afternoon.
We're down to 35, but it's going to be very entertaining. You wanted
to know what happened at scrutineering? Well, do we ever really
know? See
the recent news item
for one sad tale.
PS. A quiet
day today, but it's going to be mayhem tomorrow, with short, sharp,
30 minute sessions until the conclusion of practice and qualifying
in mid-afternoon. Will there be a good crowd? Well, apparently the
cooler air helps the sound of the cars to travel further into the
city of Le Mans, so there's no excuse for the French citizens not
knowing this event is taking place.
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