MOTORSPORT: Peugeots on pole

Peugeots fly at Le Mans
Peugeot has set a cracking pace for the Le Mans 24-hour sportscar race in France, filling the first four positions on the grid with its diesel cars, ahead of three Audi diesels and then two petrol Lola-Aston Martins.

Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, the former Champ Car star and later an F1 driver, took pole position in his #3 Peugeot 908 TDI with a lap of 3min 19.711sec around the 13.629km circuit.

In the LMP2 category Danny Watts went fastest for Strakka Racing in the battle of the Honda Performance Development cars against the Highcroft Racing Acura driven by expatriate Australian, David Brabham.

They have qualified 15th and 17th outright respectively in the field of 56 cars for the 78th running of the classic, still regarded by many as the world's greatest motor race -- certainly for car manufacturers.

Eighteenth on the grid is the LMP1 Ginetta-Zytek of Nigel Mansell, making his Le Mans debut with his sons Greg and Leo.

The 56-year-old 1992 F1 world champion Mansell admits that Le Mans is "terrifying".

"The longest race I have entered in my life is Indianapolis (500 miles, or 800km)," Mansell said. "That was three or three-and-a-half hours. This is 24 hours and the thing is that it's double or triple stinting. You may have four to six hours off and then you have to go back in the car again. That may be okay the first time, but the third or fourth time, oh boy -- and then you have gone through the night too."

Leo is the only one of the Mansells with Le Mans experience, having driven a Ferrari for the Modena team last year.

Brabham won Le Mans outright 12 months ago with Peugeot, ending years of Audi dominance, and enjoyed class wins the previous two years.

This is his 17th start there and he said Highcroft, which usually contests the American Le Mans Series rather than the European series, had opted to concentrate on its race set-up rather than try to better Watts's time of 3min 37.72sec at the end of qualifying.

Highcroft is using special low downforce bodywork for the first time at Le Mans, with 133 differences to its usual ALMS kit, while Strakka has raced with it already at Europe's Paul Ricard and Spa circuits.

Honda reveals new twin-turbo V6
A mock-up of next year's Honda engine for the new LMP1 category -- a 2.6-litre, twin-turbo V6 -- has been on display this week in front of the Le Mans pit being used by Highcroft, HPD's official factory entrant.

The engine is expected to power entries for Highcroft and customer teams like Strakka next season.

The new engine is considerably shorter than the 3.4-litre normally-aspirated V8 in the LMP2 Acura ARX-01c's.

Highcroft team principal Duncan Dayton said the V6 left enough room to mount a flywheel as part of a hybrid system and "that's what I've suggested to HPD".

For this weekend's race Highcroft plans to use 44 tyres and over 2100 litres. Average laps speeds for the best LMP2 cars will be about 225kmh, maximum cornering speed 220kmh and outright top speed nudging 300kmh.

Almost 80 per cent of a lap is at full throttle, with 56 gear changes per lap around the Le Sarthe circuit with its 21 corners.

An Aston Martin DBR9 will start from top spot in the GT1 category, while in GT2 the Risi Ferrari of Italian Gianmaria Bruni was the top qualifier.

Sites to keep abreast of the race are planetlemans.com and lemans.org or check out the complete grid in our 'last chance' Saturday morning event preview.

Eurosport, available via Foxtel, will screen much of the race while Channel 10's digital offshoot OneHD will show part of it Saturday night and Sunday night, before the Canadian GP.

Eight-hour production car race at the Creek
On the subject of local endurance racing, the Australian six-hour production car race is coming up at Sydney's Eastern Creek on July 18 and a new eight-hour production car event has been confirmed this week for the same circuit on November 21.

The Australian Racing Drivers Club hopes the new race will attract entries from New Zealand and Asia as well as competitors from the Australian Production Car Series in marques such as Mitsubishi, Subaru, Toyota, Honda, Holden, Ford and Nissan.

ARDC president Andrew Leithhead said the event might become an annual round of the Asian Production Car Endurance Championship.

Racers told to be on best behaviour - on and off track
Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) president Jean Todt said this week that professional race and rally drivers may face competition penalties in future for misbehaviour on public roads -- like Lewis Hamilton "honing" in Melbourne in March.

"There is an incompatibility between the status of a role model champion and a possible infringement on the road," Todt told French newspaper La Parisien.

The immediate focus though will be on whether Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel (and for that matter Hamilton and his McLaren teammate Jenson Button) "behave" themselves if racing in close company again in Montreal on Monday morning.

Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner has said that if Webber and Vettel find themselves in the same situation they did in Turkey two weeks ago "they don't push themselves so hard".

It has also come to light since the Turkish GP that there was miscommunication in the McLaren team which could have seen a similar collision between its drivers, who ultimately finished first and second there.

Horner has said the next two GPs are potentially the most challenging for Red Bull.

"We know we [with Renault engines] have a deficit to the benchmark engine in F1 [Mercedes]. With the F-duct McLaren have done a good job in optimizing [top speed] -- that will obviously be an advantage [in Montreal], but our car has its strengths in other areas," he said.

"If we can be quick in Montreal and Valencia we have nothing to fear between now and the end of the year in terms of circuits. But we have some mighty opposition."

Vettel has continued to deny, in an interview with the BBC, that he was to blame for the Turkish collision, while Webber -- with his contract extended to the end of next year (Vettel was already contracted for next season) -- said "everyone should get over it".

Webber was confident the controversy would not affect his momentum going into the Canadian GP.

Comeback champ Michael Schumacher has won a record seven times in Montreal and been on the podium 12 times in 15 starts there.

It was in Montreal that Lewis Hamilton first won a GP in 2007, and two years ago Robert Kubica won for BMW.

One commentator this week rated Kubica, now with Renault, the outstanding driver so far this year. But any prospect of the Polish star joining Ferrari in the next two years was extinguished midweek when the Italian team extended Brazilian Felipe Massa's contract as Fernando Alonso's teammate until the end of 2012.

Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali claimed the Scuderia had "a driver pairing that is without equal in terms of talent, speed and its ability to work together for the good of the team".

The Webber and Massa deals leave little room for movement in the top teams for next year, while Ferrari is looking even further into the future, signing 11-year-old Montreal karter Lance Stroll to its driver academy.

Stroll is still five years away from being able to drive on public roads in Canada and has been contracted two years younger than McLaren did with Lewis Hamilton.

It may be more than coincidence though that Stroll's father, Lawrence, owns 10 Ferraris, an interest in Montreal's Ferrari dealership, was instrumental in launching Tommy Hilfiger as a global brand, owns the Mont Tremblant circuit that once hosted the Canadian GP, and is estimated to be worth $570 million! [Ed: Kerrrching!!!]

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