Le Mans Series
The Modena Aston Martin team has qualified strongly despite losing a driver a day before the race
Courtesy of Team Modena
Frenchman, Jean-Marc Gounon has taken overall pole at the 1000km of Donington.
With overcast skies but pleasant whether conditions the two 20 minute qualifying sessions saw plenty of action.
Gounon set a time of 1:20.756 averaging over 179.340 kilometres per hour.
The Courage cars had practiced strongly and this qualifying result vindicates the speed they showed in the earlier sessions. As the only Yokohama users in the class, it proves the effectiveness of those tyres.
Second in LMP1 is the Zytek car lapping only one tenth slower than the pole position car.
Championship leaders, Pescarolo Sport will line up third for tomorrows race. This grid is tight with the Pescarolo less than six hundredths behind the Zytek.
In fact the top seven LMP1 runners qualified within a second of pole position with the eighth placed car – the Chamberlin-Synergy Lola AER being 1.3 seconds off pole.
Creation are running two cars for the first time this weekend and are running strongly
Courtesy of Creation Autosportif
As expected, the Lister Storm Hybrid and Protran cars struggled and proved to be a few seconds off the pace.
The LMP2 class pole was won by the RML MG Lola who is two tenths ahead of the Rollcentre Radical. These two cars will line up seventh and eighth on the grid ahead of the two slower LMP1 runners.
Binnie Motorsport will line up third in class and 11th overall. All the LMP2 cars were relatively competitive with the Belmondo Courage Ford being the slowest of these runners.
The Le Mans Series runs two 20 minute qualifying sessions, one for GT cars and one for Prototypes. The Prototype qualifying went without too much drama, but this much could not be said about the GT qualifying.
After setting a time good enough for second early in the session, the Oreca team would see their car spin and hit ending their session. The mechanics should be able to get the car right for tomorrow.
This had just compounded a hard day for the Oreca team who had brake problems all day and at one point they had set themselves on fire. The cars are quick but they and the drivers seem fragile this weekend.
The best GT1 time was set by the Aston Martin DBR9 of the Labre team. They put in a lap of 1:27.390 which was just fast enough to beat the, now battered, Saleen.
The GT1 cars are tightly matched with all seven cars being within six tenths of a second. In an odd occurrence, they will all line up together on the grid with, from 21st to 26th grid positions.
The GT2 grid is led by the Ferrari 430GT of Eagling and Sudgen ahead of the similar car of Drudi/Rosa/Montermini. The Spyker of Coronel and Dumbreck lines up third in class, proving their practice pace.
All the GT2 cars were relatively close except for the aging TVR which was over five seconds behind their closest competitor. Like the GT1 category, the GT2 cars will line up in a row from 27th to 41st positions.
All 41 cars that entered have qualified for the race. With one round remaining, this race could decide the championships. It will be a hard fought race.
Join FeedMeSportscars tomorrow as we report from the track.
Sam Tickell