Second Free Practice - Porsche give a hint of their potential pace

Image: Romain Scholer

There were a couple of red flags .. the first was when #37 SMP Racing 03-Nissan had a big and damaging accident at Raidillon when Viktor Shaitar lost it. He was fine but it looked as if the floor pan of the Oreca 03 Nissan might have been damaged. This brought out the red flags. Then some laps later Simon Dolan in the #38 Zytek Z11 Nissan brought out the red flags again when he had a lurid spin in almost exactly the same place. However he missed the scenery and the marshals sorted him out, he rejoined and the flags came in.

Image: Romain Scholer

The weather dried out nicely so the front runners began to get stuck in and put in some serious laps. In fact Jani’s lap in the #14 Porsche was quicker than the fastest lap in last year’s race with a 1:59.887 sec. Team tactics were a bit hard to fathom all round since we don’t know what the teams are actually up to.. it  might be they were running in race specification, or maybe qualifying specification. One thing we thought was certain was that nobody would show what sort of pace they could run at. So Porsche’s fastest lap came as a surprise. 

After that honours were pretty even between Audi and Toyota. There was one slightly curious anomaly with the #3 Audi which we were led to believe was running in Le Mans specification which meant the long fast Spa Circuit would rather suit it. But it didn’t show at this stage. Mind you Audi have had a busy week shuffling tubs and building cars so maybe this was more of a shake down all round

Rebellion's new R-One Toyota eventually finished a fairly modest 12th behind a couple of LM P2 cars but we think they will be happy that it went well and is all in one piece ready for 

the serious business of qualifying..

Image: Romain Scholer

LMP2 went well for #26 Morgan Nissan , the rest of the pack are on the pace despite various excitements so let’s wait and see what occurs in qualifying ‘proper’. The balance of performance adjustments seem to have been rather effective and nobbled the factory Porsches rather successfully! They were ‘awarded’ an additional 25 kgs of ballast. They probably won’t be happy lying way behind the #88 Proton Porsche which is last year’s un-penalised) model. The #88 heads the GT grid ahead of a flurry of Ferrari F458’s.

The factory Aston Martins have either lost their way or are being a bit canny because they do appear to be off the pace. After all they have ‘lost’ 15 kgs of ballast since Silverstone. As we said before this is ‘free practice’ so lets wait until the main event before drawing too many conclusions.

Full results on www.fiawec.com

Jock Simpson