Photo by: Rainier Ehrhardt
Pescarolo Team Autovision at the 2011 24 Hours of Le Mans
Almost where we wanted to be…
The second day of qualification has shed a new light on the LMP1 field. First, the performance gap with the diesel cars has been reduced from nine to seven seconds per lap. And the numerous spins and crash from the leaders proves that nobody’s hiding his game anymore… Still, we can only dream of ending up on the podium but the smaller gap means a potential top 7 finish if our competitors suffer from any setback during the race.
In the LMP1 Gasoline category, the Pescarolo n°16 has been leading the pack most of the time until the Lola n°12 from the Rebellion Racing team took the virtual pole position with a mere advantage of 2/10th less than 30 minutes before the checkered flag. Rebellion has always been a strong contender but this performance took our team by surprise, given that we always had a comfortable 1 sec. lead all week.
Loosing the 8th position on the starting grid was a bit frustrating but technical director Claude Galopin had other priorities than chasing a virtual pole position: “Our program for the last session was to fine tune our race set-up in order to improve driving comfort, lap consistency and tire wear. Our time was set with a full fuel tank…”
As for Henri Pescarolo, his mind is already set on the race: “Preparing the 24 Hours must remain our top priority… As I said yesterday, our main goal is to lead the LMP1 gasoline category and the end of the race, not before. Who knows, we might even be able to outperform a diesel or two. At Le Mans, anything can happen and last year’s edition is the perfect example."
-source: pescarolo
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