First Qualifying .. The Story so far

A bit of history for a start .. avid forum readers will have grasped that the expression “To finish first .. first you have to finish” is pretty valid … but there is another one “ To finish first .. first you have to get to the circuit”. This was the bit that your dynamic Team CA were struggling with. Le Grand Fromage destroyed his faithful Volvo en route. This in itself was quite and achievement. Sweden’s best has a reputation for being pretty well bombproof, but not ‘Davies proof’ it seems. The car is now sitting in a costly garage and will probably never see the shores of our Sceptred Isle again. It is a molten heap. So now we can rely on the ever reliable Dane… nope …his clutch expired en route and his car is in intensive care. Exciting stuff taking Les Peage at the gallop. But at least it is expected to live. Our famous US backstop TC was actually in Le Mans but unable help all that much due to an inability to travel more than about six feet from a loo. So up until today all the stuff you might have seen on the ACO web site was achieved on a wing and a prayer.

You will be amazed to hear that after all these challenges the entire team (with the exception of your writer who got delayed by a petrol seeking pantomime ) made the editorial meeting prior to first qualifying.

So, with the arrival of the team, so did the rain. It hasn’t rained for weeks in these ‘ere parts until now. It started drizzling as soon as the lights went green and then got worse all the way through the session. Several cars ‘explored their limits of adhesion’ but on the whole not much damage was done. One of the victims who tested things to the limit and used the Armco to break his fall was the No.39 Chamberlain Synergy Lola AER.. yup .. that was the one that had a serious attempt to return itself to component form during testing. The luckless Angel Burgueno is not with us having failed to qualifying himself so he left the job of car wrecking to Miguel Paes de Amaral who did much the same thing but rather less violently in virtually the same place. Sadly we do not have Hugh Chamberlain’s pithy response to this transgression. He id get the session stopped and the red flags came out. Less impressive was Piccini’s visit to the gravel traps in the 007 Aston Martin. This resulted in embarrassment and a lot of gravel in the car but not much else. Unlike the Aston the No.12 Courage Mugen spun and hit the wall hard enough to put end to his efforts in this opening session.

Audi were being rather cagey, that is a surprise, they stayed in the dry and threatened not to go out and get the cars wet. Until the end of the session when presumably somebody suggested they really ought to get involved and they promptly took over the top two places on the time sheets ahead of the two Pescarolos. Thoughtfully they put the No.7 car ahead of the No.8 car! So all the waffle about the Audis being very tricky in the dry with all that massive torque and therefore virtually undriveable in the wet was not entirely accurate. The works Corvettes on the other hand had studied the weather and decided there was little or no point in going out and risking stuffing one of the cars so they stayed put. The Aston Martins on the other hand put in more laps than anybody else and were sitting comfortably 8th and 9th overall. There was one LM P2 ahead of them and that was the No.20 Pierre Bruneau Pilbeam Judd of Rostan/Macallister/Pullan.

In LM GT2 The White Lightning Porsche 911 GT3RSR was mixing it with the big cars in the tricky conditions. The wet track was also being enjoyed by the No.85 Spyker and they were 3rd in LM GT2. We suspect the team were rather impressed by that!

Sessions like this really don’t prove all that much particularly when all the weather forecasts suggest that it will be a totally different situation tomorrow. A possible exception to this rule might be the No.17 Pescarolo Sport with Helary/Montagny/Loeb. Helary did spin the car but the team’s main aim has been to get Sebastian Loeb out in the car. We rather imagine he will be happier than most in the slippery conditions.