Let’s try and fill in some Test
Day holes.
TVR
had a nightmare Sunday. Tim Sugden had the engine
let go (actually a head gasket) in #92 TVR
T400R, and after a replacement was speedily fitted,
that failed too (no, it didn't, apologies for
duff information). With a (head gasket)
failure in the other car too, the yellow and black
machines were marooned in 55th and 56th spots.
At the other end of the grid, it was
a fine performance from the Team Goh Audi, second
fastest on the day, fastest of the Audis. Jan Magnussen
was at the wheel: “I am very happy about our
result. We made a big progress on our set-up today
and I should say this is my best Le Mans! For the
race I think I can do even better.”
Discussing the three R8s (Goh, Champion, Audi Sport UK), “we’ve
got the fuel mileage advantage and the repairability factor of the Audi
R8s,” concluded Rod Bymaster, Motorsports Manager for Audi Sport
North America.
Ulrich Baretzky, Head of Engine Technology, described the R8s as “our
used cars,” which are “fast, really fast. The drivers are
experienced and the crews are experienced. It was a very good performance
throughout the day. The overall speed of the cars is good. These cars
will be very competitive.”
Lehto, Johansson and Pirro certainly
think so regarding their Champion entry, as do Biela,
McCarthy and Pirro of their Audi Sport UK car. The
accident to Frank Biela will be more of an inconvenience
than anything else – but presumably an expensive
one.
The Pagani oil slick that Biela met
was an inconvenience to a number of others too, and
rather spoiled the end of day ‘going for a
time’ last hour. Olivier Beretta had a set
of super sticky Michelins on board when the red flag
came out, and didn’t get another go with them
during the last half hour. Had he gone for a time,
he would robably have found that everyone else was
going for it too. It turned out that just before
17.00 would have been the best time to try for an
out and out lap. Tom Kristensen put in that flier
at the end, which may well exaggerate the genuine
gap back to the Audis.
Did Panoz have a good day? "We
worked pretty hard on taking some understeer out
of the car and made a great deal of progress,” summarised
Gunnar Jeannette. “Reliability was perfect
all day and both the cars completed the day without
any damage so we are in pretty good shape to come
back for the race in June."
Well spotted Tim Pendergast, Special
Projects Director at IMSA. No Gunnar, this wasn’t
your fifth visit to Le Mans, it was your seventh,
apparently. You first ran here in 2000, and Tim says
you’ve done four Test Days and three races,
so far.
Lister had a very good day, the #13
Courage seemed to go round and round all day, with
a best that almost matched the faster (developed)
Pescarolo Sport #18, the Durango set a 3:55 on its
first visit to the track, the Nasamax Reynard squad
had a slightly frustrating morning followed by a
chance to launch in large scale repairs in the afternoon – what
an effort to get out again at the end – while
the Norma set a best of 4:03….
Veloqx-Prodrive were more than satisfied
with their Sunday performance, with just the concern
over an engine failure to worry them during the next
five or six weeks. Peter Kox: “We had a very
good day, despite a few small problems including
the engine this morning. This was a bit of a set
back but the Veloqx Prodrive team changed it really
quickly, very impressive, so we didn’t lose
too much time. After that we did some back-to-back
testing of the rear wing and the car was running
really nicely so, now at the end of the day, I can
say I am really quite confident for the race.”
Tomas Enge set the best time in the
red cars, quickest by 1.7 seconds over the #50 Corvette
in GTS, but the Czech didn’t have a happy rally
on Saturday. He won the first special stage of the
rally in his Skoda Octavia, but then the suspension
/ hub broke, causing his retirement. He’ll
have another chance on the rough stuff in two weeks
time, in a Ford Focus WRC car.
The Luc Alphand 550 (Jerome Policand)
made it a Ferrari 1-2-3 on the day in GTS.
Corvette were almost on 550 pace, particularly
with #50. Can you imagine Ron Fellows and Johnny
O’Connell not being terribly interested in
going for an absolutely flat lap? Doug Fehan: “We
used this session to make some decisions on our set-up
for June, such as the fact that we will use our new
sequential 6-speed gearbox. We know that our braking
is improved and there are some parts of the track
where we can really make gains. In a situation like
this we’re running short four or five-lap stints
and then make some minor adjustments.”
More downforce seems to have helped
braking from high speed, and the C5-Rs are quicker
than before through the Porsche Curves.
Franz Konrad seems to have been best
of the Saleens with his own #66, 3:59.071. The GNM
Saleens were hampered by engine trouble for the Ramos
/ Chaves car (no Amorim) and a down on power V8 in
the Erdos / Newton / Pickering reserve: a fine 4:03
from the reserve car in the circumstances.

We’ve no idea why the Scorp Motorsport
Viper was so slow (4:21). Larbre were typically efficient
with a 4:00 best lap. We never did get a chance to
check whether they’re going to Enna this week,
or not.
We never did catch up with the Nielsen
/ Dumfries / Shimoda combo., but will aim to during
the week. John Nielsen was planning to go for a time
at the end of the day, but circumstances dictated
otherwise. He would like to think that his unique
car is in the race for the overall, not class, win.
With Intersport in engine trouble in the morning
(very early on), then having to get the ten laps
in for two of the drivers, and then the 17.00 red
flag, they weren’t going to get a fast time
in – so Nielsen’s 3:47 in the morning
was the best in 675 by ten whole seconds. The 3:33
last year in qualifying by Mark Blundell is worth
remembering. The older WR just about scraped under
four minutes yesterday…while apart from the
DBA4-03S, the rest of the class averaged over four
minutes for their best laps.
We covered some aspects of the GT class
yesterday, but didn’t connect with any of the
Ferrari teams – although XL Racing’s
best of 4:28 sums up their pace. We’ll get
hold of that Mowlem fellow this week, he’ll
tell us about the 360s. The Mike Petersen accident
in the morning took some of the sting out of the
class, Marc Lieb not going for a banzai time, PK
not using qualifiers either, and the Ferraris very
close to the pace but not quite there were all factors
too – so fastest time in LM GT went to Daytona
winning team The Racers Group, and a fabulous 4:08.636
from Jorg Bergmeister. We come hoping they’ll
all do a Bergmeister / Kristensen, but it’s
never as simple as that, is it?
More tales from the Test Day during
the week, starting on Tuesday.
One of these two is off to the Lausitzring
next, the other to Mosport...
