FIA World Endurance Championship leader Allan McNish starts the second round of the eight-race series from third place in his hybrid diesel Audi sportscar at Spa in Belgium tomorrow (4 May).
McNish is joined by regular co-drivers Tom Kristensen (DK) and Loïc Duval (F), the winning trio from last month’s opening Silverstone race.
The combined best two lap times of McNish and Kristensen was an average of 2min 00.610secs around Spa’s 4.35-mile Grand Prix track to clock the third aggregate time – 0.648secs shy of “pole” position.
Allan reflected: “Qualifying was always going to be traffic dependent as it certainly proved. On each of my laps I had to overtake a car at some point which is not ideal but as it’s an average for two drivers over a four lap minimum, that’s how it is.
“It was dry for practice and qualifying which was a surprise because the forecast was for rain at some point. We had two long [practice] sessions before qualifying. One, two three for Audi in qualifying is not a bad place to start but my aim is to reverse that in the race and score a second race victory.”
Meanwhile Oliver Jarvis, from Burwell near Newmarket, who co-drives alongside Marc Gené (SP) and Lucas di Grassi (BR) for the first time, begins the Spa race from second on the 35-car grid after the efforts of Gené and di Grassi (2:00.236s) in the 30-minute, red flag interrupted session tonight (FRI).
Their “long tail” Audi R18 e-tron quattro differs from that of the other two “factory” Audi R18 sportscars of McNish/Kristensen/Duval plus pole-sitting Marcel Fässler (CH)/André Lotterer (D)/Benoît Tréluyer (1:59.961s), its aerodynamics especially designed for next month’s Le Mans 24 Hours.
Jarvis remarked: “Our performance in the ‘long tail’, which isn’t ideally suited to Spa, is much better than expected. Lucas and Marc almost grabbed ‘pole’ – they both did a stunning job. But the front row is a great position to start from and I’m optimistic for a good race result.”
Tomorrow’s six-hour race is scheduled to start at 1330hrs (BST).
Source : Audi UK