Backstretch Motorsports

The diesels of Peugeot and Audi are sandbagging? David Brabahm has said that two of the three Peugeots are running track set-up the third depending on fuel-load tire wear set up.

The Aston Martin drivers like Jos Verstappen believes the leading diesels have not yet shown their true pace.

“They [Audi and Peugeot] are still very quick on the straight, although they’re running more downforce than us,” says Verstappen, “When you follow them into the Porsche Curves, their speed through there is massive compared with us. It’s not how it should be, but they have everything sorted and their engines are so strong.”

Peugeot set the pace in the morning warm-up ahead of today’s start of the Le Mans 24 Hours, while Audi suffered a few dramas.

Franck Montagny set the fastest lap of the session in the pole position-winning #8 908, just three tenths of a second quicker than Alexander Wurz in the #9 sister car. Pedro Lamy completed the top three for the French manufacturer, just another four tenths back from Wurz.

Alexandre Premat was the quickest Audi driver this morning, in the only R15 not to have a problem of some kind. But Premat’s time in the #3 car was more than two seconds slower than the lead Peugeot.

Mike Rockenfeller was a couple of tenths behind Premat in fifth, after Marco Werner had spun the car at the Ford Chicane while lapping Patrick Dempsey’s GT2 Ferrari 430.

The #1 Audi was only seventh quickest in the warm-up and lost significant track time when Tom Kristensen bounced across the gravel at the Dunlop Curve and crawled back to the pits. Allan McNish brought the car back out at the end of the session and lapped within four seconds of Montagny’s time.

The pole-sitters also set the pace in the other three classes, with Casper Elgaard keeping the Team Essex Porsche at the head of the LMP2 times, once again edging out Team Goh’s RS Spyder.

A perfect start to the French long distance classic: At the qualifying session for the Le Mans 24 hour race, Porsche race cars claimed pole position in both the LMP2 class for sports prototypes as well as in the production-based GT2 category. Competing for Denmark’s Essex racing as a regular driver, Casper Elgaard (Denmark) qualified the RS Spyder on pole in the LMP2 class in 3:37.720 minutes.

The #63 Chevrolet Corvette of Jan Magnussen, Johnny O’Connell and Antonio Garcia continued to out-pace the #64 car of Oliver Gavin, Olivier Beretta and Marcel Fassler, with one second between them in the morning run.

The Felbermayr Porsche also continued to set the pace in GT2, running a couple of seconds faster than the AF Corse Ferrari and the IMSA Porsche.

In qualifying the transponders of Mika Salo in car Ferrari #82 and Eric van de Poele in car Ferrari#83 were not responding so on timing lists no times were recorded but the problems wre fixed and their times restored. Car #82 qualified 40th and car # 83 50th.

Drayson Racing is set to make its premier in the 24 Hours of Le Mans from the ninth position of the LM GT2 grid. In the process, the No. 87 Drayson Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT2 will make a dream come true for the all-British driving team of Paul Drayson (London/Gloucestershire, UK), Jonny Cocker (Guisborough, Yorks, UK) and Marino Franchitti (London/Edinburgh, UK). Cocker, the young, sports car prodigy, set the ninth-quickest lap of the class with a time of four minutes, 6.482 seconds around the 13.629 Km/8.468 mile-long Circuit de la Sarthe. It was Cocker’s first qualifying attempt on the track.