Qualifying 1

There are the usual two qualifying sessions to come; both with a one hour interval, and in both sessions, all drivers must complete three laps in the dark. That is, in part two of each session.

As Danny Watts explains coming into the first session, teams are “not too fussed about this first session really, it’s just to make sure everything’s ok and a system check for tomorrow.”

During these sessions, a car’s fastest lap will go towards its place on the grid for Saturday’s big race.

“One lap in qualifying isn’t going to mean too much over 24hrs” added Watts. “So really you can use these four hours as a test and preparation more than anything else for the race meeting itself.”

Part 1

Car #81 had a precautionary engine change last night following a suspected electrical problem so its first few laps would be steady installation laps.

Danny Watts was out on the 13.629 km track first for Team LNT to undertake the above installation laps. Unfortunately, only one lap was achieved before coming into the pits with a suspected gearbox or clutch problem. Investigations revealed a failed Clutch slave Cylinder which would take the rest of the two-hour timeframe to repair.

Disaster struck for Rob Bell in the sister #82 car only 3 laps into the first run for the Panoz when a tyre failure caused extensive damage.

“Going down the Mulsanne straight by the first chicane, there was just a big explosion at the front end” said Bell. “Clearly the front tyre has just exploded and done a lot of damage to the front end so we’ll probably be out for an hour or so. We probably won’t get out again in this session but we’ll get out this evening.”

The exploding tyre had damaged the carbon nose and undertray and the offside front wing was missing. With new parts on standby and a very long in-lap by Bell as he nursed the car home, this too sat in the garage for the remainder of Qualifying 1: Part 1.

Approaching Part 2, #81 is repaired, whilst #82 has a new nose and a new wing being fitted so both cars will definitely be on-track once again.

Part 2

Part 2's main objective was to just get each driver through their mandatory 3 laps. This was achieved with both cars repaired in time for the 22hrs track time to begin.

Towards the end of Part 1, a heavy rain shower fell over part of the circuit making the track very wet from half way down the Mulsanne stright up to Arnage. Although rain had stopped falling, this made for a part-slippery track wich would only go to hamper clocking up a 'good' qualifying time.

Conditions did improve towards the end with Rob Bell and Danny Watts both improving their times, but at the moment 12th and 8th respectively.