The final 2 hours and 40 minutes of running for the two day (Mon/Tue) test, hosted by Toyota, for the FIA WEC runners saw little incident and little improvement in overall pace from the 20 official runners.
There were improvements though for the #4 ByKolles CLM AER, Pierre Kaffer improving to a 1:44.648, eclipsing the earlier time from the LMP2 timesheet leading Strakka Gibson, the #42 car’s day ended early after a gearbox issue intervened, the team still short on spares for their new acquisition. They left the test though considerably buoyed up by the pace of the Gibson, expect them to feature at the sharp end of the LMP2 field at the end of next month!
DSC didn’t get to speak to Roman Rusinov during the day, the Russian always in the car when we visited the G-Drive garage. He did though use his time in the afternoon wisely, the #26 Ligier Nissan’s time improved to second fastest in class, 6th fastest overall with a 1:46.244
The timesheet for the Tuesday session is here Toyota-Hybrid-Test-Times
A well attended lunchtime Press Conference saw The CEO of the track owners Carsten Schumacher joined on stage by Gerard Neveu and by DMSB Chairman Hans Stuck, the racing legend named as Grand Marshal for the coming 6 Hours of the Nurburgring.
The current contract for the race is a single year, but the Nurburgring are set to push hard for a three year commitment from 2016 onwards.
A gaggle of significant drivers were also presented at the Press Conference with Andre Lotterer, later to host a very interesting tour of the Audi pit garage for selected media, reminding the audience that with the exception of his appearances at the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring (2009-11) his last time racing at the Nurburgring was 1998/99 in Formula BMW and 2000 in Formula 3 – “when they still had the nice old chicane”
Also in evidence around the track’s environs were Nico Verdonck and Adam Christodoulou, both due to take part in treating on the Nordschliefe.
Offering an LMP2 driver’s perspective of the prospects for the august WEC race was a happy looking David Heinemeier Hansson; “It’s a great track but I was very surprised how narrow it was in parts – If an LMP1 catches us in the wrong place they’ll lose 3-4 seconds without a doubt, there are places where there’s nowhere for us to go.”
Patrick Dempsey agreed with that assessment: “They need to be patient but if they do that they CAN get by, but we need some space.”
The #77 Dempsey Proton pilot was enjoying the opportunity to test too “Any test I get is really important. It helps me, it helps the team and it helps the chemistry between us all.”
It’s been a tough task for Dempsey in the WEC this year having never run either at Silverstone or Spa prior to the WEC race weekends. The second ‘half’ of the season will see him having tested at the Ring, having already raced at CoTA and having tested at Bahrain.
Dempsey was joined at the test by Marco Seefried, but not by Pat Long: “He’s just become a dad so quite rightly he’s at home.”
