In stark contrast to Friday’s gloom, Saturday brought with it vastly improved visibility and dry conditions; and with those came much improved laptimes from the 24 Hour field in the second qualifying session.
It was virtually guaranteed that we would see an early improvement in times on a fully-dry track, and it was the Q1 leader – the #10 Black Falcon Mercedes SLS of Andrii Lebed, Andreas Simonsen, Dennis Rostek and Harald Proczyk – that posted the first flier of the morning; 8:26.993. This was already 12 seconds quicker than the previous night’s best and the #10 was followed by stablemates #9 and #63; all three under 8:30.
The three Mercs were followed by the #8 Haribo Porsche GT3 R and the #18 Manthey Racing RSR.
The #50 Manthey Porsche popped up in second soon after with an 8:28.767, while the #26 Marc VDS BMW Z4 and #69 Dörr McLarens were both prominent in the top ten in the early stages.
The #2 Prosperia-C Abt Audi clocked in at 8:25.083 later in the first hour, with the #18 Porsche – it’s drivers reporting that the car feels a lot better than last year – went second, three quarters of a second back.
The SP8 battle briefly put in an appearance in the top 20. The #76 GT Corse 458 consolidated its class lead with an opening 8:44.334, but it was soon usurped by the #79 Gazoo Racing Lexus LFA. The Ferrari responded, but its new time secured the top spot for just a few seconds before the Lexus improved again. By the end of the session, the #79 was in 23rd on 8:33.840, while the #76 was 28th on 8:37.970.
We hadn’t yet seen an improvement from the #123 Schultz Motorsport Nissan GT-R, and indeed we wouldn’t during the entire session. The car gradually fell back to 30th overall, but its time from Q1 saw it comfortably into the Top 40 Qualifying session and Michael Krumm was given the morning off.
We had seen remarkably few shunts during track action up to this point, but the #109 Mathilda Racing VW Scirocco GT24 had a big impact with the barriers at around the hour-mark; hitting the Armco hard on one side of the track before ricocheting across the tarmac to clobber the metal on the other side. The clean-up required waved yellows and so there were no more improvements for several minutes.
As the session headed into its second hour, the #1 G-Drive Audi took sixth with a2 8:27.198, but then almost collided with a BMW at the end of the start/finish straight. Fortunately, the BMW driver saw the danger and jinked out of the way at the last moment. The car improved to fourth on its next circuit, but the #29 WRT Audi then went top on 8:24.034.
Various small improvements were noted as the session approached the 45-minute mark, but there was nothing to get the blood racing. Suddenly, though, the #007 Aston popped up into third place with an 8:25.800 from Pedro Lamy – a time that would have given it second were it not for an 8:25.179 from the #22 Rowe SLS at almost exactly the same time.
The session was now all about getting into (or staying in) the Top-40-Qualifying session. Ten cars were prequalified on account of their VLN results – 1, 11, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 35, 45 and 44 – and three of these (all BMW Z4s) were outside the top 40 on the timing screens, meaning only the top 37 cars on the screens would join them. The #125 Rowe Racing SLS was the only SP9 car not in the qualifying zone, but an improvement soon after lifted it to 31st. This left the #36 Kremer Porsche as the car to beat in 36th (the 37th car being pre-qualified).
But things were still changing at the head of the field, too, and the #10 Black Falcon Mercedes went back to the top of the screens with an 8:23.181, while the #4 Phoenix Audi improved to third on 8:24.768. The #69 MP4-12C, meanwhile, moved up to 20th, with a time that meant the top 20 cars were covered by less than 10 seconds.
As the session neared its conclusion, all eyes were scanning the screens looking for signs of other impending improvements. But with just under two minutes on the clock remaining, the session was brought to a sudden halt as red flags were being waved around the long track. The #135 Gazoo Racing Toyota GT86 had hit the wall hard at Breidschied and it was decided to end the session as the safety crews extracted Akira Iida.
He was airlifted to hospital as a precaution, but hopefully is not badly injured.
The sudden conclusion to proceedings had the effect of cementing the Top-40-Qualifying field, with the cars involved being 10, 29, 4, 2, 22, 1, 7, 18, 11, 21, 26, 50, 44, 35, 9, 63, 3, 8, 25, 69, 23, 16, 15, 79, 14, 17, 12, 76, 40, 123, 125, 28, 27, 88, 55, 36, 19, 20 and 24. This included all 33 SP9 (GT3) cars, the top five in SP7 and the top two in SP8.
Quotes from the garages:
Bas Leinders, #26 Marc VDS BMW Z4: “Honestly I am not interested in any way in qualifying, particularly here – It just puts more pressure on the team at the start of the race. If for whatever reason my car is on pole then I will start the race and keep right out of trouble!”
Frank Biela, #3 G-Drive Audi R8: “The car is good but the problem is the weather – We need a good car for the race so the laps we did yesterday are much more important for the race than anything we do today.”
David King, Aston Martin: “We’re delighted to get the GT3 car into the top 40 qualifying and had hoped that we might have an outside chance of getting #005 in too – But we didn’t get anything like a clean lap and there are just so many quick GT3 cars that it was always an outside bet.”
Romain Dumas, #18 Manthey Porsche RSR: “The car feels really good, much better than last year, a really good car to drive here and very consistent. The main thing is the race and not qualifying and the main thing there is going to be the weather.
“We know what the forecast is saying but we know too that it is very often not correct! The car handles well but we are down quite a bit in straight line speed because we are running so much aero. We’ll be right in there for the race though.”
Timo Bernhard, #18 Manthey Porsche RSR (with a potential record six-race-win record in sight): “The record would be fantastic but like always you have to put all of this out of your mind and get on with the job. The car looks good and feels good and best of all we have a team that is very experienced here and works very well together. We’re happy ahead of this one.”
We now await the ‘lottery picks’ for the Top 40 qualifying order, with the session itself beginning at 17:50.
MH/GG
