Jock's Jottings - A TESTING DAY FOR ANYBODY

A TESTING DAY FOR ANYBODY …

There is a remarkably healthy crowd here today, rumour has it 15,000 stoic citizens braved the elements to presumably watch Peugeot not Audi. Their efforts have paid off because they will have seen or at least heard about a fair bit of drama. With no big screens, or for that matter, small ones, finding out what is going on is not easy. They will however those with an interest in meteorology won’t have been disappointed.. Nor will any flood watchers amongst you. At the time of writing we gather that the campsites look like something out of ‘Raiders of The Sunk Ark’.. Noah.. Ark .. geddit?! By Sunday the place was alive and well with the new plateau shopping open etc. There seemed to be a lack of places to grab a snack but no doubt the intrepid traders of Le Mans will see to that before the race.

Apart from the storms and floods, top of the list of things you have missed would have be the blinding series of laps that Sarrazin put in while piloting the Peugeot soon after lunch. The track was, unusually, dry at the time and he blitzed it! There was some considerable doubt that the timing screens, which had not been behaving all that well anyway, were right because he was a massive four seconds inside the old lap record and pole from last year! Whoops… You do wonder whether the team had actually intended to demonstrate the searing outright pace of the car to the opposition but having done so Sarrazin chose to put in a further series of laps just to prove a point! The blitz lasted four laps, which was interesting.. if he was on qualifying tyres they wouldn’t have lasted and if he was running very light on just the smell of diesel he wouldn’t have been able to do four laps. His bloody ‘in lap’ was a bit rapid too! Bit like Top Gear Stig ‘ Some say that he could have a couple of seconds faster than that’…

One assumes this might have given Audi a bit of a fright, but then again in this game they may well have know all along that the Peugeots would want to grab the headlines.. Whatever.. Audi never really responded, or maybe they never bothered to respond. Mind you one does wonder whether they could have done so, nobody seemed to know quite what the Audis could achieve, and that we suspect is precisely the way Audi would have wanted it! Who knows, there is generally plenty of sand-bagging going on, clearly a concept that Peugeot seemed to have overlooked.

Later in the afternoon Gene went out clearly wanted a chunk of this glamorous, yet rapid action so at 14:51hrs he went out on for ‘quick one’. The track was not 100% dry as far as we could tell and this maybe contributed to the fact that Gene then put the #7 Peugeot into the gravel trap having hit the wall backwards at high speed .. Ouch! Having now seen camera footage (probably on YouTube by now) it was quite a big ‘ouch’. It had been shaping up to be a quick lap since he had set fastest times on the first two sectors. Nobody seems to know what happened, least of Peugeot and Mr Gene. If Peugeot did know they were not telling. All that seems clear is that he put a wheel on the grass.. often a sign, in my book about racing, that one is trying a bit! The tricky bit was that, yet again, a Prototype became airborne. (memories of The Monty Mercedes Flying Circus) Anyway he didn’t hurt himself too badly, we gather he is now the proud owner of a broken or maybe dislocated toe and very sore, badly bruised elbow. Having now seen pictures of the car it is safe to say that the dents may not polish out!

More to the point there is a rumour afoot that Peugeot currently don’t have a garage full of spare race cars so, if as we believe, the tub is ruined it may be a tricky job getting a third car ready before the race. It will also distract them from their preparation for the race.

Another ‘biggie’ involved Tracy Kohn in the Risi Ferrari 430 GT. It seems he also put a wheel on the grass and paid a rather hefty penalty for the error. He hit the wall hard enough to break the steering wheel.. he wound up in the medical and later went to hospital for a check up.

The number of ‘Red Flags’ was a testament to how tricky the conditions were but it does seem that the Ferrari and Peugeot were the only cars that risk not starting the race. The incredibly long and incomprehensible regulations suggest that the ACO and their Stewards will be asked to allow Peugeot to race with a different car… now that is likely to be a foregone conclusion with a French Team, French Organisers etc. Let us hope the Risi team get the same treatment, even assuming that a) their car was a write off as feared and b) they have a spare car lurking about.

All this ‘excitement’ at the front of the field rather eclipsed the rest of the pack. Martin Short was interviewed by Radio Le Mans and he suggested that there was no way that a ‘petrol’ car could possibly keep up with the current range of diesels, let alone a factory run diesel. He suggested that they were running in LM P1.5 along with the other petrol runners! Some thought that the ACO were going to try and narrow the gap but so far there is no sign of that … things may change when Peugeot eventually win the race outright and petrol Pescarolo comes 2nd!

LM P2 was, as usual, largely ignored by everybody but it was the debut of the Porsche RS Spyders which should have made the news. OK so these are not ‘Factory’ cars but looking around the Paddock and surrounding area there were a surprising number of what looked like ‘factory’ support vehicles, plus a few familiar faces along the way. Anyway they cleaned up LM P2 but not all that comprehensively. As you may recall we tend to ‘root’ for the RML Lola but they had a minor set back when one of their supremely reliable and professional drivers, one Tommy Erdos, fell down stairs and sprained his wrist. Knowing Tommy we believe them, he not the sort of guy to fall off his bar stool just before getting into the car! So the car and team didn’t shine but still came home 3rd fastest in class!

LM GT1 belonged to Aston Martin as suspected since you may recall that we never think the Corvettes are going for a time during testing. However it was a bit of a surprise to see the Larbre Competition Saleen S7 (3:55.383 secs) squeezed in between the leading #009 Aston (3:53.531 secs) and the #64 Corvette. (3:55.520 secs).

LM GT2 went to the surviving Risi Competizione Ferrari F430 GT driven by the hot shot team of MELO J./SALO M./BRUNI G with a 4:05.561secs. They were just ahead of the Flying Lizard Porsche 997 GT3 RSR that put in a 4:05.590 secs. Behind them was the BMS Scuderia Italia MALUCELLI M./RUBERTI P./BABINI F. Ferrari F430 GT with a 4:06.894.

The day sort of petered out in the end with no real improvements to the times.

You ‘Team in Media Centre’ still reckon that the Peugeots will fly off into blue yonder for the first few hours gaining lots of prime time TV coverage… Audi will go about its business in its usual precise Teutonic way and eventually win the race by not falling apart. In our new mythical LM P1.5 we would like to our man Shortie running up front but it will probably be one of the ‘factory’ Pescarolos that will win this battle, maybe once again getting onto the podium if the attrition rate is high. LM P2.. hard to see anything that might beat the Porsches in this already fragile class. In LM GT1 .. Being ‘Brits’ we would naturally like the Aston Martins to win the class, but they did look a lot better in green than they do in Gulf Colours. But the Yanks are not trustworthy!! Those Corvettes are very rapid and sound so ‘under-stressed’, plus they are getting the hang of this endurance racing stuff! LM GT2… interesting! We have always banged on about Porsche’s reliability but nowadays even a road going Ferrari can make it between services without spending too much time in the garage.. plus there are rather a lot of them out there … so even as a solid gold Porsche fan I have to concede that the Italians could just make it!

Have a safe journey to Le Mans and please, please be careful.. There has a huge shift of emphasis by the French Police and they will be over you like a rash! Plus they now have lots of speed cameras; OK they are not connected up with the UK law enforcement agencies… yet!