There was a sense of relief up and down the pit lane when RACER toured the FIA World Endurance Championship pit lane at the Lusail International Circuit in Qatar this morning. Finally, after two days of waiting around, the full field of 37 cars is on site, the final containers rolling into the paddock overnight.
Unfortunately, the shipping delay has been the big headline of the WEC’s inaugural trip to Qatar so far. By now the cars should have completed two days of running, with the teams preparing for a three-day rest before the 1812 Km race meeting itself begins on Thursday.
Instead, the majority of the LMGT3 teams and the Cadillac Racing crew are in a race against time to get their cars prepped and their garages built ahead of the delayed start to the pre-season test, which will now begin on Monday afternoon after two revisions to the timetable.
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Even the race organizers have needed to work hard to ready themselves for the Prologue, as the scrutineering equipment was part of the delayed shipment, which has been on a 930-mile journey from the port of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia to Lusail over the past two days.
This meant that even the cars which were on site and ready to run by Thursday afternoon were unable to undergo their mandatory technical inspections before the event. The backlog is lengthy, and the technical team hasn’t been able to deal with it until this afternoon.
Nevertheless, the delayed Prologue will take place over four sessions on Monday and Tuesday following the track walk this afternoon, with Session 2 still running late into the night, finishing at 11pm local time. To allow the delayed teams more time to prepare, a second session has been added to Tuesday’s schedule, with each team needing to state whether they will take to the track in Session 1 tomorrow afternoon, or Session 4 during Tuesday afternoon.
While some of the LMGT3 garages are still a long way off from being set up, a few teams are sitting pretty eager to get running. United Autosports, TF Sport and Iron Lynx (and Dames) were lucky that their cars were already in the region, while Proton Competition had one Mustang on site from day 1, a brand-new chassis air freighted from the USA.
TF and United were lucky that they scheduled testing at the Dubai Autodrome before this event, even though it didn’t go entirely to plan. The UAE government seeded the clouds, generating torrential rain that flooded parts of the circuit. What should have been a comfortable two days of track time for the pair of British teams became a rather frustrating experience.
“It started raining heavily on Sunday night, and when we arrived on Monday morning it started bucketing down. We had to put sandbags in front of the garages.
“Luckily there was a three-hour Radical test on Thursday, and we were given Thursday afternoon as an exclusive slot. We ran both cars with all our drivers and didn’t experience any tech issues.
For TF Sport it was a particularly important test, as it was the first run with its new pair of Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs, which prior to the run in Dubai had only received brief shakedowns in the U.S. Despite the disruption, team owner Tom Ferrier told RACER that it was a valuable exercise ahead of the Prologue.
“Both cars are brand-new, they were flown from the U.S. to the UK in January, we had the cars for 10 days to strip them down. It was good for the guys to spend time with them before they were flown to Dubai on February 2nd. It was a blessing in disguise.”
United needed the time in Dubai, too. Since the entry list was revealed and the team had its spaces on the grid with McLaren confirmed, testing time for the team with the 720S GT3 EVO and its line-up of drivers has been limited.
“It was more of a reservoir than a racetrack, but you have to adapt,” added team co-owner Richard Dean. “We made the best of it. We couldn’t run the first day — the garage was flooded — but we were able to do pit lane, back up the start-finish straight the wrong way and do a loop.
“It was valuable for getting used to the differences between a GT3 car and an LMGT3 car. There are so many differences in software, power management, energy management.”
In Hypercar, multiple teams also have tested in the region ahead of the season opener. This included track time at the Lusail circuit last November for multiple factory teams including Toyota Gazoo Racing, which told RACER it was a useful experience for its drivers.
“The test was all about learning the track, especially for the drivers. It’s not easy — if you make a mistake at Turn 8, for instance, if you make a mistake you will lose a lot of time straight away. And we know from Formula 1 that the tire can be quite critical,” the team’s WEC chassis leader John Litjens said. “That’s why a few other teams were here, as the drivers need to get some laps and get into a rhythm.”
The conditions, he added, were warmer than the temperatures expected for next weekend’s race, but it was still a useful experience gathering data ahead of the Prologue.
“We are running in different conditions to Formula 1,” he added. “And it was hotter than what we expected here for the race. When we tested it was 30 degrees (86F) plus; now the prediction for the race is 23, 24 degrees (73-75F), which will make a difference for the tires.
“We will have to wait and see in the Prologue if this makes a big difference or not. We will have to see how it evolves.”
