Morning warm-up: Audi quickest - and slowest
samedi 17 juin 2006 - 09h59
After a day with no action on the track, with the teams concentrating on final preparations, the start of the 2006 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans is drawing closer. Saturday dawned clear and bright, conditions which continued through the 45-minutes morning warm-up.
 
The cars head out on track as the warm-up gets under way
Photo : Nicolas COUSSEAU - ACO/Nikon
This is the last chance the teams get to ensure that the cars are ready for the gruelling challenge ahead of them – and for some, the result was extremely worrying. Remarkably, one of the cars which hit trouble was the one which is due to start from pole position. The No.7 Audi Sport Team Joest R10 headed out of the pits soon after the warm-up began – but early in the lap the team spotted unusual readings on the telemetry, and told Allan McNish to slow down and come straight back to the pits.

When he returned the team quickly changed the left drive-shaft, and he went out again – but again he slowed dramatically on the Mulsanne straight and limped back, this time with smoke sometimes visible coming from the car. The team will have a lot of work to prepare the car for the 5pm race start.

Meanwhile the sister No.8 car, due to share the front row of the grid with the No.7 entry, was lapping with no apparent problems. Frank Biela in particular put in a storming lap, going around in 3:33.946 – a second faster than last year’s fastest race lap. However the Audi may face stern competition, as Emmanuel Collard put in a lap of 3:34.265 in the No.16 Pescarolo Judd, an indication that Audi will not be able to relax during the race.


Third quickest was the sister No.17 Pescarolo, the best time for that car being a 3:36.354; perhaps Pescarolo intend to run a ‘tortoise and hare’ strategy, one car running flat-out to push the Audi cars hard, while the other concentrates on a fast race pace; all will be revealed later in the day.

In LMP2 the No.25 RML Lola AER was eighth overall, Andy Wallace putting in a 3:45.924 after the chequered flag was out to put the car just 0.142s ahead of the No.22 Rollcentre Radical Judd – so the competition in both prototype classes could be intense.

As if that wasn’t enough to whet the appetite, GT1 also promises a titanic battle – this time between the ‘works’ Aston Martin and Corvette teams. The No.007 and No.009 Aston Martin DBR9 cars may have been quickest in qualifying, but Corvette always insist they concentrate on race pace, and don’t particularly care where they qualify. Preliminary confirmation of this was that the No.64 Corvette C6.R was quickest in the warm-up with a lap of 3:53.914, ahead of the 3:54.752 put in by the No.009 Aston Martin DBR9, with the sister No.63 Corvette 0.201s back in third.

The news in GT2 is that the car which claimed pole, the No.76 IMSA Performance Matmut Porsche 911 GT3 RSR, completed seven laps during the session; although the car was well off the pace of the quickest cars, getting out at all was an achievement after the car suffered a huge accident on Thursday, hitting the wall hard - in the Karting corners.

The No.83 Seikel Porsche 911 was fastest in GT2 with a lap of 4:06.160 – a good performance from the team as they were a late entrant, promoted from the Reserve list when another team couldn’t take part. Second in class went to the No.80 Flying Lizard Porsche 911, just over a second slower, while the No.87 Scuderia Ecosse Ferrari F430 GT claimed third.

The teams now have just a few hours to resolve any issues the warm-up may have uncovered; Audi in particular will be working furiously to resolve what is being reported as a transmission problem on the No.7 Audi.

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