JRM Racing took part in its first Le Mans 24 Hours qualifying session today, with Peter Dumbreck capturing the team’s fastest time, 3:37.088, 11th quickest in the overall classification. JRM makes the step up to Le Mans after its FIA GT1 World Championship title victory last year. The trio of David Brabham, Peter Dumbreck and Karun Chandhok will use the Honda HPD ARX-03a to contest the LMP1 category alongside works and privateer outfits. Earlier in the day, David opened running in the practice session for JRM with three runs in the first 90 minutes. The Le Mans 2009 winner recorded the team’s best time of 3:34.641, 10th in the overall classification. David then handed over to Karun, but the Indian reported some instability on the rear of the car on his second run and ran wide into the gravel on the first corner. He returned to the pits for checks before David got back in the car to compare set-ups with the beginning of the session. The Australian then handed over to Peter Dumbreck. In the later qualifying Peter was first out in the car, completing four timed laps with his – and the team’s overall – best time of 3:37.088. Karun, who will become the first-ever Indian to compete in the Le Mans 24 Hours this weekend, then posted three timed laps before David rounded off the day.

David Brabham

Practice session: 3:34.641 (20 laps)

Qualifying: 3:43.257 (8 laps)

This session was all about getting in the laps in the night session and we ticked the boxes. We tried something to improve the car a little, and we did achieve this, but there are still areas we need to improve. We need to analyse the data as we are still missing some speed. We know what the problem is, but how to fix it is going to require some creativity. We’ll get there.

Karun Chandhok

Practice session: 3:37.555 (7 laps)

Qualifying: 3:43.402 (5 laps)

Today was about getting more time in the car and fine tuning the balance. We’re still very new round here, both myself and the team, so the learning curve is very steep. We’ve made a lot of changes as we’ve understood more about the tyre warm up and performance, plus the behaviour of the new aero package. It’s been a fairly tough day as the grip is low and temperatures have changed throughout the sessions but we are still learning all the time. On the plus side we have covered a lot of ground and there’s a lot of time between now and qualifying tomorrow to completely understand how we can improve.

Peter Dumbreck

Practice session: 3:57.272 (2 laps)

Qualifying: 3:37.088 (6 laps)

We didn’t really treat today as a qualifying session as we expect track conditions to improve tomorrow. We put some laps on the board in the session, but it was more about getting as much information as possible. We had a few small issues, which are entirely reasonable considering how new we are to this, but there’s a lot of promise from the team.

Nigel Stepney, chief engineer and team manager
We did what we had to do today: completed the obligatory night qualifying laps for each driver and did more checks. We didn’t run any new tyres in the session and got caught in traffic on several potential fastest laps so the times aren’t entirely representative of our potential. We are struggling for grip and getting the tyres up to temperature but we do have an idea of why this is happening, which gives us a direction to go tonight.

Source : JRM Racing