Sears Point Raceway X-Factor 22/07/2001   Saturday First Practice   © Tom Kjos Sonoma, California, USA--The ALMS cars roll off on time for their first official practice session under cloudy skies and with cool temperatures. Rinaldo Cappello quickly establishes the top time on the sheets, a 1:23.847. For reference, that time is over three seconds slower than the pole time and track record set by Allan McNish here last year, but would have put the Audi on the grid between the two BMW LMRs. The two BMW teams likewise quickly go to the head of the times, Dirk Müller sticking an early 1:34.401 in the BMW Motorsport M3 GTR, closely followed by Bill Auberlen's similar PTG machine. How much faster is GT this year? Remembering that this time should tumble significantly in qualifying later today, it is already nearly a second and a half faster than last year's GT pole. Fifteen minutes into the scheduled one-hour session, Tom Weickardt puts his American Viperacing Viper GTS-R into the wall at turn 11, the hairpin leading into the pit straight. The session is black flagged for about five minutes to haul in the wreck. Tom appeared to be a little shaken after the incident, but told our reporter that "I hit the tire wall after my brakes locked up. There is a bump out there as you enter the turn, and I carried too much speed into the corner. We won't be able to practice or qualify the #44 car today, since parts will have to be overnighted to us, but we should be OK by race time tomorrow." When the field goes back to work, Bill Auberlen turns a 1:33.776 for Tom Milner's PTG team. Now the best GT time is not only a full two seconds faster than last year's pole, but faster than Kelly Collins' Corvette, which has posted the fastest GTS time of the morning at 1:33.827. The remainder of the session runs without drama on the track, excepting that we guess that Porsche Motorsport's Director Alwin Springer would characterize BMW's performance here as dramatically bolstering his argument that the new Bavarian GTR unfairly raises the bar in GT. Raise the bar it certainly does, but at least to date, there is no agreement from those who count (the ACO) that "unfairly" applies. Before the session ends, the times of the two M3 teams are more like GTS than GT. In fact, Ron Fellows went out twice to respond to BMW times, not wanting to lag the Bimmers, even in a practice session. At the end he puts the Corvette comfortably ahead, but none of the other GTS cars are. Dirk Müller is slightly quicker than the Konrad Team Saleen S7R, while the second Corvette trails all but one of the M3s. Worse yet, the best of the Porsches is seven-tenths of a second adrift of the slowest of the BMWs. In 2000, Karl Wendlinger put his ORECA Dodge Viper on the GTS pole with a time of 1:31.779. The car is back in the hands of American Viperacing, but thus far hasn't found the pace, the first session's best effort being 1:36.460. With Shane Lewis now on the driver strength, we anticipate the team will get much closer to the French team's benchmark. Jon Field's Intersport Lola-Judd continues to struggle against the ALMS regulars, the car's 1:27.157 now even trailing the Barbour LMP675 on the time sheets. Although there was little sign of it yesterday, the Reynard 01Q-Judd now looks like a car that might get amongst the faster LMP900s, the sub-1:27 time edging the Lola, and close on the heels of one of the Cadillacs. So there is little deviation from expected form, at least for now; the M3 are somewhat stronger than anticipated, and the Intersport Lola has not been as quick as might have been expected with the larger restrictor in place. Final fast laps by class: 1 LMP 900 Audi Sport North America Audi R8 1:23.176 2 LMP 675 Dick Barbour Racing Reynard 01Q-Judd 1:26.899 3 GTS Corvette Racing Corvette C5-R 1:31.257 4 GT BMW Motorsport BMW M3 GTR 1:33.242 Copyright ©2000-©2023 TotalMotorSport