Justin Wilson, Penske Porsche quick early at Long Beach
Written by Scott Keller · April 19, 2008
Taking up wwhere Sebastian Bourdais left off, Justin Wilson set fast time in provisional qualifying for Champ Car’s last race at Long Beach. Wilson showed that his Newman/Haas/Lanigan DP01 wasn’t hampered by “hangar rash”, and that the NHL engineers on the McDonald’s team have got the DP01 figured out.
Meanwhile in the American Le Mans Series, Timo Bernhart and Penske Porsche are the quickest among six LMP2 cars that will start ahead of the Audi RA’s in the LMP1.
Champ Car: Wilson quickest, but what about Tracy?
But getting back to Champ Car, it is worth noting that Wilson sits in the car that Bourdais won the championship in last year, and in which he crushed the competition in Long Beach. The NHL engineers that work on this car have been dominating at the Long Beach Grand Prix for years. They know how to get the most mechanical grip out the car on the bumpy, slick streets, and Just Wilson is one of the best in the business at getting the performance out of the car.
Teammate and recent Indy Car race winner, Graham Rahal, had a pretty good day, setting fifth fastest time. Ahead of him the top five were Wilson, Servia, Tagliani, & Domingez.
A driver of note that is not in the top five, but is in a car this weekend is Paul Tracy. After weeks of speculation from the media and Paul himself about his status for the race, I spotted Tracy in the Champ Car paddock on Thursday night. Tracy is piloting his usual ride, the Forsythe-Pettit #3 DP01 for the weekend. Tracy has a long road ahead of him today, though and running over one second off of Wilson’s pace.
Jimmy Vasser’s “coming out of retirement for one race” race is going about as expected. Vasser, who is driving a DP01 with a gorgeous new KV livery, was 15th quickest. I’m expecting him to get a little more comfortable and move up closer to the top 10 today.
ALMS: LMP2 Crushes the Audis
In ALMS news, the big story surrounds the LMP2 cars dominating in qualifying. The top six overall starting positions were taken by P2 cars. The big P1 prototypes just don’t have enough room to stretch their legs in Long Beach, and it looks like they may have to use some pit strategy to make it to the front today. The Audi R10’s are about a half-a-second off the Penske Porsche’s pole speed.
The Champ Car series will hold final practice and final qualifying to day, and the American Le Mans series will run a sprint race this afternoon. Both races can been seen tomorrow on the ESPN/ABC family of networks.
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“Justin Wilson, Penske Porche quick early at Long Beach”
When I get finished painting my porch I may have enough time to drive it to the race. If I could just find where they put the streering wheel and throttle pedal on the dang thing.
“The Champ Car series will hold final practice and final qualifying to day”
I’m glad they didn’t hold the final practice to morrow or I might have missed it.
Hey Scott, did you text message your report in? I think it’s time you invested in a new phone, this one seems to have lost it’s spell checker. Unless you were playing checkers at the time which cancels the spell checker’s abilities.
Actually it was a wicked game of Battleship.