Road Atlanta: Creation Team qualifying report

CREATION TEAM QUALIFYING REPORT

The British Creation team have thoroughly enjoyed being back in North America for Petit Le Mans, but were left disappointed with today's qualifying performance, despite having had a good week's testing/practice at the fast, 12-turn Road Atlanta track.

Despite Jamie Campbell-Walter's best efforts in qualifying for tomorrow's 1,000 miles/10 hours (whichever comes first) race, 14th place on the grid was the best that could be achieved today by the Creation CA07-Judd in a highly competitive field of Le Mans prototype cars.

Ian Bickerton, Team Principal, was naturally disappointed but sanguine about the day's events. "Not a lot we can say about that really. We are short of testing and we've got a car that we can't quite get to grips with at the moment. I think maybe we were on the wrong Dunlop tyres, and unfortunately we've now got to start on those tyres. We'll be praying for an early safety car period! We've just got to get our heads down and race well. We've got nine hours to prove we've got a good car."

Jamie Campbell-Walter of London said after the session: "Our qualifying position is unfortunate, one of those things. We decided to change from a medium to a soft tyre just for qualifying, but unfortunately the tyre was different to what we've been running all week. The net result of that was basically running a lower front ride height at a circuit where there are lots of compressions and dips and it made the car very oversteery in the quick corners. It was very difficult to drive and not the car we've had in practice. It's very disappointing but qualifying is just that and, whether you start 14th or where we realistically might have been, probably 8th, it's a long race. The race is over nine hours and I think we've still got a good race car, a good driver line up and a good team. Creation could still get a result yet."

-credit: www.creationsport.com