Second Qualifying Session

De Grassi hit the barrier in the run-up to Arnage
then Roussel in #29 Morgan had a shunt while
avoiding the stricken Audi while it was limping home 

After the very muddled and interrupted session yesterday, the time had come for the teams to get stuck in and do some serious running. Strangely it carried on being very fragmented with everybody popping in and out of the pits, mending, and tweaking, swapping drivers and so on. No real pattern seemed to emerge.

The ‘new’ #1 Audi has made it out and was going remarkably well, bearing in mind that they were still shaking down the car. We will never know just how hard Audi had worked to arrive at this point! Some suggested that this was a ‘Testing’ chassis so pretty well sorted and complete.. Others swear blind it was a new chassis and tub. Whatever.. It is up and running, it has a strong set of drivers and is on the pace.

It was very hot for this session with the air temperature hovering around 26.6 C.. The track was 30.0C and the humidity was 45%. It felt a lot stickier than that over lunch! The downside was that it seemed to be causing the most grief to the Porsches. There have been reports that both the batteries and the turbos have been getting far too hot. The battery has its own cooling system because lithium ion batteries apparently run pretty hot even on a good day. You may have noticed how warm your cell phone gets.. now multiply that a thousand times and you will feel the difference. Why the turbo were overheating is a bit of a mystery, it is not as if Porsche are new to ‘turbo technology’!

Things were bubbling along OK until 19:45 when #71 Ferrari 458 Italia driven by James Colado went off... You guessed.. in the Porsche Curves. The red flags came out and the medical team swung into action to extricate Colado. He was taken to the medical centre and the marshals set about clearing up the mess yet again.

Racing restarted at 20:10. Ten minutes later it all kicked off again! This time the #1 Audi, with De Grassi at the wheel,  spun at Indianapolis .. It is not entirely clear what happened but he hit the barriers pretty hard, bounced back and set off back to the pits. You could almost hear the groan from the hard pressed Audi mechanics! The poor old #1 had taken another hit! But there was worse to come, just as the #29 Morgan Nissan, driven by Roussel was passing the damaged Audi #1 (that had almost made it back to pit entry by then), the Audi swerved slightly left for no obvious reason, leaving Roussel nowhere to go and he had to take to the grass. Then he hit the wall spun across the track and it all ended with a hefty rear end impact. #1 Audi in the meantime headed off to the pits and Di Grassi was off to the Stewards. And our 7th Red Flag came out!

Elsewhere the #79 Porsche driven by Bret Curtis had a big off into the barriers at The Dunlop Eases. We are not sure which incident brought out the red flag!

The green flag was waved at 20:45…

With all this time lost.. again.. the final session will be extended by 15 mins. It must nearly be time for a bite to eat and a rest! But no chance! The # 98 Aston driven by Dalla-Lana, #60 Ferrari with Giammaria at the wheel and finally the #92 Porsche driven by Makowiecki all in got involved in the same incident. The exact sequence of events is hard to work out but we think the #92 Porsche was hit by the Ferrari which then spun off into the gravel. The Porsche staggered back to the pits and the others were extricated from the gravel! The #98 Aston spun avoiding the chaos.

Finally the chequered flag came out and we will wander off and try and work out what happened!

Jock Simpson