BMW concedes it has to raise game
| By Steven English |
Thursday, June 10th 2010, 10:31 GMT |
 BMW has admitted that it has to improve its performance significantly in order to challenge the front runners in the GT2 class at Le Mans.
The two factory M3s were just 10th and 11th in class in Wednesday's first qualifying session, five seconds off the pace of the GT2-leading Risi Competizione Ferrari.
The #78 car of Augusto Farfus, Jorg Muller and Uwe Alzen suffered gearbox problems in practice and a puncture in qualifying yesterday, but both cars ran smoothly for a large portion of the two-hour night session.
While Schnitzer Motorsport team manager Charly Lamm was pleased with the initial progress, he conceded that the BMWs are a long way from challenging for class honours at present.
"We experienced a difficult start to the afternoon practice session with gearbox problems and a puncture, but apart from that we didn't face any technical problems," he said.
"It was important to give our drivers as much track time as possible and we managed to achieve this. However, we must acknowledge that our opposition set some very competitive laptimes. We will work hard in order to reduce the gap to the front runners in our class before the race."
Jorg Muller added: "For us drivers it is crucial to have maximum trust in the car, only then can we really attack and clock fast times. This trust grows with every lap and I am certain we will be able to improve further in the two sessions today."
|
