Portimao: Zytek qualifying report

Ginetta-Zyteks Dominate In Portugal

Repton-built cars fastest in both classes for LMS race

Ginetta-Zyteks yesterday dominated practice for Saturday's 1,000km do Algarve. In the afternoon and evening sessions and in both the LMP1 and LMP2 classes, it was the GZ09S cars that were easily the fastest. Quickest overall by almost half a second was the Strakka Racing Ginetta-Zytek of Danny Watts and Nick Leventis. In the LMP2 class the Quifel-ASM Racing car of Olivier Pla and Miguel Amaral was over one and a half seconds quicker than its nearest competitor.

Englishman Danny Watts underlined his performance at the opening race of the Le Mans Series where he set pole position time. Yesterday, his times of 1min 32.040secs and 1min 33.230secs in the second and first practice sessions respectively showed just how competitive this year's Ginetta-Zytek GZ09S design and the new Zytek ZJ458 4.5-litre engine can be.

Frenchman Olivier Pla was even more dominant in the LMP2 class finishing in ninth and tenth places overall in the two practice sessions and beating some of the more powerful LMP1 cars in the process. In the first session he recorded a time of 1min 35.858secs, over a second faster than the next in class. Later in the day he extended that lead with a time of 1min 35.260secs.

Effectively backing up the above was the third Zytek entered, the 07S of GAC Racing was Philipp Peter who moved up from fourth in class to third in the two practice sessions, recording a fastest time of 1min 37.140secs. The Austria-born Peter shares the car with Karim Ojjeh and Claude-Yves Gosselin.

The first practice session took place during the afternoon but the second was during the hours of darkness. The race itself, the third round of this year's Le Mans Series starts at 7.15pm on Saturday and will continue until the early hours of Sunday morning, an innovation for the series. It is also the first time that the Le Mans style prototypes will have raced at the new 4,652.87 metres Algarve track.

Said Zytek Engineering operations director John Manchester, "We are delighted with the overall performance of the cars. The three teams are to be congratulated on their impressive practice times. We now look forward to this evening's qualifying session."

-credit: zytek