The weather was overcast, but reasonably warm as the 20 cars made their way out to the Grand Prix circuit for the first practice session of the weekend. Tomas Enge led the session in the Reiter Engineering Lamborghini FLII, setting a 1:25.146, almost four tenths quicker than the other 39 drivers.
Grasser Racing’s #28 Lambo of Jeroen Bleekemolen and Hari Proczyk finished second fastest with a 1:25.530, and the #90 Scuderia Villorba Corse Ferrari came in third after a lap of 1:25.573.
Of the early runners, Nick Tandy wasted no time to show his speed, as he put in a 1:27.621 on his first flying lap in the #89 Farnbacher Racing 997. But Jeroen Bleekemolen, in the #28 Grasser Lamborghini went to the top of the times with a 1:26.102, shortly after.
“We have to be realistic with our expectations at this early stage,” Bleekemolen said. “There’s a lot of drivers out there who don’t know the track. It’s a very difficult track, even for people like me and Tomas Enge who have experience here, you still have to get back into it.
“For the first three laps I was like, ‘Wow! How am I going to do this’ then the feeling comes back. It’s great to drive here though, the car is pretty good, but I am sure the others will catch up as they get used to the track. But we should be competitive.”
This is the first time the veteran Dutchman has been at Brands Hatch since his days in A1 GP, so as you can imagine he’s very eager to get going this weekend:
“2009 was the last time I was here. It’s good to be back, it’s one of the best tracks there is, and you don’t get many chances to drive the Grand Prix layout, so it’s always good fun. It will take all the way up to qualifying to get in the groove here and be able to squeeze the last couple of tenths out of the car [due to lack of experience in a GT car at the circuit].
“It takes time here, it’s so fast, and is so hard to get your confidence up. There is also no run off, so if you get it wrong, it is weekend over.”
Tomas Enge quickly put an end to the shuffling at the top however, when he put up a 1:25.274 just ten minutes into the session. He would remain unchallenged for the remainder of the hour as he improved his time.
It was a notably slow start to the weekend for the current Teams’ Championship leaders HTP Motorsport. Their best car – the #84 of Maximilian Buhk and Götz – coming in 11th overall and 1.2 seconds off the pace.
Aside from an early spin at Graham Hill Bend by Bleekemolen, the session was running smoothly for all the teams until the final 10 minutes of the session when Philipp Frommenwiler had an off at the exit of Stirlings, heavily damaging the front end of the Farnbacher Porsche. The team are not yet sure if the car will be ready for the race.
Not all was well with the car anyway, as Nick Tandy was complaining that the car wasn’t running as it should have in the early part of the session:
“At the moment it’s just a one off round for us, so we need to get up to speed quickly,” Tandy told DSC.
“We have had a couple of small issues. Teething problems with the Pirelli tyres which we haven’t used before mainly, there’s just a couple of problems with them that we need to sort out.”
Stephen Kilbey (pics by Dan Bathie)
