There was a 'Collective Test' for the WEC cars at Fuji yesterday. Two sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
As far as the privateer LMP1 teams were concerned, these sessions were primarily for shaking down and setting up - no long runs over 20 minutes were done.
But both Audi and Toyota used the afternoon to run some full tank tests. The results were as follows:
Audi No.1 (Lotterer, Fässler, Tréluyer): 35 laps with an average lap time of 1m 29.988s
Audi No.2 (Kristensen, McNish): 36 laps with an average lap time of 1m 30.782s
Toyota No.7 (Wurz, Lapierre, Nakajima): 32 laps with an average lap time of 1m 30.437s
The trouble is, that by my calculation, you will need to get 34 laps out of a tank to make it possible to run the race on just 6 pit stops, unless there is rain (unlikely) or a safety car.
So it will be very interesting to watch the Free Practice sessions tomorrow, and see if the Toyota can go the extra couple of laps. If it can, without compromising the lap time, then we could be in for a jolly good race!
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Audi is still struggling with tire wear when double stinting. After his 35 lap stint, Lotterer did a 34 lap stint presumably on the same tires. His average lap time during that second stint dropped to 1:31.248.
ReplyDeleteSo Toyota probably has enough pace to make up for their additional stop.