Laguna Seca - 09/09/2001   Race Morning   © Tom Kjos Monterey, California, USA—It’s another cool and overcast morning on the Pacific coast at Laguna Seca. Yesterday it cleared by late morning; it’s a fair bet today will be the same. There were no surprises in morning warm-up. Most cars were two seconds or more off qualifying times. One exception is the American Viperacing #45 to be driven by Shane Lewis and Darren Law. The heavily revised GTS did not make it to qualifying yesterday, but put in five laps this morning, posting a best of 1:28.526. All we can take from this is that the Viper is “up and running.” The Historic GTP cars are on the track in the midst of their one-hour race. They qualified yesterday afternoon, the pole going to Jim Adams’ 1990 Chevrolet Spice GTP in 1:18.876, followed by Bruce Canepa’s 1990 Nissan R-90C, and the first of the Porsches, a 1988 962 (3.2 liter). The ten 962s here in particular have brought back great memories of years past. Their signature turbo wastegate chatter gets grins of appreciation. Adding to the aural enjoyment has been scream of the Jim Rogers / Bill Adam 1985 Group 44 Jaguar XJR-7. Contrary to other reports, GT/GTS qualifying yesterday ran its full 20 minutes of scheduled track time. Perhaps it just seemed to the Porsche teams that 'time flies when you’re having fun'. The stopped-on-track BMW brought a black flag ten minutes into the session that lasted approximately eight minutes. Upon the green restart at 5:19 pm, the session ran for ten minutes additional until the checkered at 5:29. We are now awaiting race start in just two hours time at noon Pacific. The NBC telecast begins an hour after that for those of you planning to watch or tape. Copyright ©2000-©2023 TotalMotorSport