Le Mans 24Hr about to get underway later this week
Monday, June 06, 2022
Taking place again over juts two sessions, the timing results across the GTE Am Class didn’t really give too many pointers as to who was really the fastest as many were cycling through necessary ‘housekeeping’ before the main event this coming weekend.
With three Circuit de La Sarthe novices amongst them, it will be a race pre-requisite for drivers Charlie Fagg, Henrique Chaves and David Pittard to be able to lap around the circuit in a minimum delta time during both day and night and yesterday’s test would have given them that daytime opportunity. Additionally, the test sessions are used by the team to bed in new brake discs and pads and to give the team opportunities to improve their drills for the many pit stop cycles that will come their way over the course of the Free Practice, Qualifying and race sessions.
Yesterday’s times were obviously comparable to their peers but were in all slower than what they were at the same time in 2021 albeit they were running with a slightly different balance of performance – again something that the test is aimed at achieving at it runs to a different criteria than that of the WEC itself.
Thankfully, no immediate issues and incidents were reported by any of the AMR teams yesterday so the next few days will give the teams a more relaxed and timelier introduction into the more formally timed sessions of the event on Wednesday with the 90th Edition of the Le Mans 24 hours starting at 16:00hrs local.
The three Gentleman drivers associated with each of the #33, #98 and #777 cars (Ben Keating, Paul Dalla Lana and Satoshi Hoshino respectively) will all be looking to improve upon the race results of last year but with anyone of the twenty-three entered GTE Am cars running this year, it will certainly be a tough battle to win for anyone!
Photo credits – A Lofthouse / D Gibson
