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Atom I've spent most of Easter Sunday watching the 24 H Le Mans test. I've never tried watching one before, having only started watching sportscars properly last year. In 2010, for cost-cutting reasons, there was no test.
The session is the only time before Le Mans week that cars can be run at the Circuit de la Sarthe. It's also essential for newcomers and people/teams/cars which haven't been to Le Mans for 3 years to complete 10 laps in order to pre-qualify.
The Lotus Evoras were unveiled in GTE-Pro at the test. They drew admiring looks with their sleek silver-and-black colour scheme but they were around 10 seconds off the pace. That said, they were also reliable. The only problem was a minor engine bodywork issue at the very end of the test. Given that 50% of the field didn't finish Le Mans last year, that could be very useful to Lotus. It was a respectable though not electric performance.
The new Aston Martin AMR-One was supposed to be doing its first Le Mans test following a performance in Paul Ricard that left something to be desired. It went badly. The #009 blew an engine within a handful of laps and the #007 lost its engine shortly after lunch... ...and Aston Martin had no spare engines. David Richards said that he didn't see the point of sending good engines after bad anyway at this stage, promised two cars for the Le Mans Series/International Le Mans Championship race at Spa (considered the unofficial dress rehearsal for the 24 H Le Mans). This performance was neither respectable nor electric, but the solutions could prove quite simple, so don't count Aston Martin out of the reckoning yet.
The hyped event that was genuinely electric was the Audi v Peugeot battle in LMP1 - especially the Audis. There's an unofficial principle that the organisers try to make the LMP1 cars lap Le Mans in more than 3 minutes 30 seconds. It's for safety reasons - although the LMP1 cars can and have got round somewhat faster in the past, it can be dangerous if something goes wrong at the sorts of speeds needed to generate the faster times. The Peugeots kept their cars below that magic invisible "barrier", probably through sandbagging. The Audis did not.
Sandbagging before Le Mans is common because the organisers are permitted to tweak regulations for performance balancing reasons. If Audi or Peugeot reveal their full strength prematurely and it turns out to be much more than their rival, they risk being pegged back in speed and then seeing their rival soundly beat them when the sandbagging stops. As such, Audi has to look at the 3 m 27 s its cars managed in both morning and afternoon sessions - 3 seconds quicker than Peugeot - with considerable worry. Going slowly is against any true racer's nature but sometimes in this series, caution is the wiser course.
Behind them, it was good to see the Pescarolos do well. Always at or near the non-Audi/Peugeot pace, the team which re-emerged from being sold off and rescued is continuing to perform well after its attrition-assisted win at Sebring.
The LMP2 category was hotly contested. The #41 Greaves car did well, with Alex Brundle particularly impressive considering that he is a rookie. The #26 Signatech also demonstrated some good speed in the afternoon. Several LMP2 teams did not attend the testing because they saw no need. It also doesn't help that there's currently a major dispute concerning how the performance balancing is being conducted in the LMP2 category between cost-capped and non-cost-capped cars. This is where I'm very glad that the F1 teams managed to prevent Max Mosley from imposing that system on F1.
The FLM class doesn't run in Le Mans but three cars in that class - the #93 Genoa Racing, #99 JMB Racing and #91 Hope - appeared anyway. They got experience of the track and earned some money by providing running for drivers, particularly "gentlemen" (i.e. pay) rookies. The Genoa and JMB traded places at the top of the timesheet but times were not really their objective.
In GTE-Pro, the Ferrari 458s were generally fastest, but the #55 BMW occasionally shone at the top of the timesheets in the hands of Andy Priaulx and Augusto Farfus. Otherwise it was largely a battle between the #89 Hankook and #51 AF Corse, with occasional interruptions from the #59 Luxury Racing (when Jaime Melo was driving). Simonsen in the #89 Hankook carved the occasional fantastic lap and surely has to be favourite for qualifying, but the #51 tended to be a lot more consistent among all three of its drivers (Giancarlo Fisichella, Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander).
There was some interesting technical development going on in the GTE-Pro class. The #51 has had some carbon panels applied to part of each of the distinctive holes in the 458's bonnet. It's not clear how this has changed its performance, but they stayed on for most of the afternoon, so the team must be content. The #89 Hankook, by the way, has no such panels, so whatever benefit the panels provide is probably not pure speed.
GTE-Am was a quiet class today. There was no real battle, with the impressive performance coming from the #50 Larbre, which is a Corvette.
As far as I'm aware, all the drivers who were attempting to qualify did so. However, live timing doesn't show any laps completed.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans is looking very exciting at this point :)
Thanks for this post Alia. Great round up for those of us who missed the session.
It looks from the official timing that on his very last lap Sarazzin showed they Peugeot was a match for the Audi as that lap was within 0.2s of McNish's best. I really hope the two cars are even as it will make for a far better race.
http://www.lemans.org/en/courses/24h-du-mans/test-day-2011/live-timing.html
Ah, the flaws of trying to pre-write an entry during a session! Peugeot's lap shows they must have been sandbagging a lot, which makes the situation look worse for Audi than it did before. Unless of course the ACO notices that one time and decides to either leave things be or slow both teams down (to get them to the magic 3 m 30 s and a bit nearer the petrol cars).
Thanks for a brilliant summary, I'm really excited for Le Mans this year!
:blush: You're welcome. I'm really looking forward to it after my marathon viewing last year. I'll need a bit of luck to manage more hours than last year (up for all 24 but missed nearly 3 due to swimming club), but you never know...
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