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Portland International Raceway

05/08/2001

Saturday

Part 2

© Tom Kjos

Portland, Oregon, USA--Second practice this afternoon started about a half hour late as a result of the extensive track clean up required by the carnage of the Trans Am race.

The sports cars finally took the track trailing plumes of oil-dry powder, and it had much the look of this morning in prototype. The Panoz LMP1-Rs quickly established fast times and stayed more or less amongst the Audis for most of the session. That was what was the same. What was different was the result. In session one, Audi went faster and the two silver Audi Sport cars put the two Panoz between them. This afternoon, Panoz hung on to the top spot, creating a Panoz-Audi-Audi-Audi-Panoz sandwich. And it wasn't because the all-conquering Audis ran any slower. In fact, Kristensen improved the R8 time by nearly three-tenths of a second, the best time of the weekend--except for David Brabham, who did better than that, edging the Audi Sport racer 1:04.387 to 1:04.404. The Johnny Herbert-Andy Wallace Champion Audi improved another four tenths, but were staring at an increased gap of nearly a half a second up to the second of the Audis, the Biela / Pirro number 2.

The Graf / Lagorce Panoz went the wrong direction from the first session, running over a second slower than their time in the opening session.

The two LMP 675s did well to stay out of the clutches of the GTS cars, while the gap between the Barbour Reynard and the KnightHawk Racing Lola a fairly constant three and a half seconds.

In GTS the Saleen S7R and Corvettes continued to trade places at the top of the class, Franz Konrad taking the Saleen around in 1:12.772, a time that stood as the session's quickest, but not as fast as 1:12.404 by the Fellows / O'Connell Corvette this morning. Engine problems held the #45 Altenburg / Lewis Viper to a single lap this morning, but the car returned to post a 1:15.273 this afternoon. No improvement there since Friday's test session, when the car turned a 1:14 and change. The Vipers remain a non-factor in the GTS class in 2001.

In GT, Bill Auberlen continued to scorch the competition, again heading the times, in this session yet another half second quicker than the previous best of the weekend. In fact, as he did at Sears Point, he put the BMW GTR between the two Corvettes. That is not likely to hold up in qualifying later today, of course. This time Hans Stuck followed him with the next best time in class, the 1:13.544 second best of the meeting. That puts the PTG cars right where Tom Milner wants them; heading not only the Porsches, but the M3 team's wealthy German cousins. I keep getting the feeling that Herr Milner likes to think of his Winchester, Virginia team as the "country mouse" of the children's story in this relationship with the Bavarian manufacturer. The latter's BMW Motorsport team had one hand tied behind its back this afternoon, as the Ekblom / Müller #43 GTR made just one lap in the hands of Dirk Müller before it headed for the garage. A loss of oil pressure put the team to work replacing the engine before qualifying in less than two hours time. By the end of the session, Sascha Maassen and Lucas Luhr had captured third in class with the #23 McKenna Porsche, less than two tenths back of Hans Joachim, followed by JJ Lehto's 1:13.694, and the second McKenna car's fifth in class 1:14.340. It does not appear as if the remainder of the GT field will be a factor in this one, unless one of them makes a huge jump in qualifying. The Petersen Racing Porsche of Mowlem and Bernhard is at least close to the Alex Job McKenna cars. The Kyser and Racer's Group entries are not.