TESTING PART ONE Sunday 4th June.

TESTING PART ONE Sunday 4th June.

The Grand Fromage and Baloo are now safely installed at Le Mans , ready for testing. The weather is thankfully near perfect. Testing weekend has its attractions away from the circuit, as far as this gourmet/gourmand/drunkard is concerned, because the various restaurants are still serving proper ‘French food’ as opposed to the impressive ‘Le Mans weekend food’. Plus it is not at all crowded.

It is interesting to note that The ACO is totally determined that everybody understands that there is no ‘official’ timing during today’s testing. Despite that we have timing screens alive all round the media centre and a steady stream of printed ‘results’. Radio Le Mans is not up and running, they start on Tuesday 13th and they can be found at 91.2 FM. There is a limited English speaking commentary today so it is a bit hard to find out precisely what is going on.

Testing takes place in two halves, the first session ran from 09:00hrs to 13:00hrs and the second one from 14:00hrs to 18:00hrs.

There is rumoured to have been a major protest, led by Pescarolo, regarding the newly designed pit lane exit. Apparently several of the teams signed a protest regarding this and Henri threatened to block the pit lane with his cars and delay testing. This did not transpire but one has to wonder what the FIA were thinking when they decided upon the changes since the pit lane is now 1.2 km long ( a very long time on the rev limiter!) and then it rejoins the circuit just about on the racing line before the Dunlop Chicane.

At the end of the first session the two Audis and Pescarolos were lining up for an interesting battle. There is no doubt now, if there ever was, that the latest diesel R10 will be competitive. The Capello/Kristensen/McNish No. 7 Audi heads the LM P1 times with a 3:35.037 which is 0.890 sec ahead of the No 8 Audi, driven by Biela/Pirro/Werner. Third is No17 Pescarolo with Helary/Montagny and No.16 Pescarolo Sport of Bouchut/Collard/Comas.

In LM P2 the No.25 RML Lola AER driven by Newton/Erdos has been most impressive and is almost six seconds ahead of the No.33 Intersport Lola driven by Field/Halliday/Dayton. The No.39 Chamberlain Synergy Lola had an enormous accident and it looks very much as if it ‘won’t polish out’ even in time for the race. It took ten marshals about twenty minutes to find and clear up all the bits and the red flags were out for 45 mins!

Just as in LM P1 the main protagonists are lining up nicely in LM GT1. The No.007 Aston Martin driven by Enge/Piccini/Turner leads the class by over 2.0 secs, they are ahead of the No.64 Corvette Racing C6-R of Gavin/Beretta/Magnussen. As usual the Dan Binks and GM Corvette PR machine are telling us that they really are not trying to set times, the objective is to find race settings and bed in the drivers. This could possibly be described as ‘sandbagging’!

In LM GT2 The Flying Lizards are really flying! The No.80 Porsche 911 GT RSR driven by van Overbeek/Neiman/Lieb is ahead of the No.76 IMSA Performance Porsche of Dumas/Narac/Riccitelli.

The only serious casualty so far has been the Chamberlain Lola B0640 AER driven by Angel Burgueno. He appeared to make a mistake, or something broke, entering the “S du Tertre-Rouge” and he missed the gravel traps travelling backwards along the grass at some speed and then hitting the crash barrier. An eye witness tells us that the barrier was pushed back about a metre. The ironically named ‘Angel’ walked away apparently unhurt from the incident the same probably can not said of his race suit which is probably heading for a washing machine nearby..