Race Day; It's wet!
By Peter RadcliffeWarm up this morning was an extended 45-minute session as this was the first day this week of wet weather. Audi again lead the times by nearly a second from the Pescarolo Courage in second place with a time of 1.47.442.The next group of five cars were all in the 1.52 second bracket and the great surprise was that the leader of this little group was the Lister Tom Coronel setting the time on his third and last flying lap. Remember the Lister has never been driven in the wet before and early in the session JCW was fastest of all. The Panoz was next, followed by Taurus Lola, Racing for Holland and the leading 675 the Courage. The #25 WR was next in 675 in 10th OA and the class leading RML Lola only 23rd .
There were upsets in the GTS and GT class as well; the Viper leading GTS and the previously dominant Ferrari in GT was only 6th. Rain is proving to be a great leveller.
Several cars explored the gravel and again the Taurus Lola was one of them further fuelling the rumours of Ian Dawson’s new garden supply business! Yesterdays trip to the gravel in final qualification was the probably reason for the teams afternoon times being disallowed dropping the car to 9th on the grid as in post race scrutineering the engine failed to cut out satisfactorily. When the car was returned to the garage and cleaned out the problem was resolved.
The only car not to go out in the morning warm up was the Morgan. No problems but unlike Lister they have done most of their testing in the wet and they felt no need to get the car dirty!
Today of course is an important day in the Rugby World Cup and John McNeil of Nasamax was seen deep in conversation with John Judd discussing the chances of England against Wales and the weather.
We will include brief race coverage today with a fuller report early next week.