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ALMS: Sebring 12 Hours Notebook – Thursday
Written by: David Phillips
Senior writer, RACER Magazine   http://www.racer.com/speedtv
03/13/2008
Sebring, Fla.
 
McNish and Audi led the way at Sebring. (LAT photo) » More Photos

QUESTION: When is the pole not the pole? Answer: When you get less than 10 minutes of green flag running during the qualifying session. Which is what happened this afternoon in the LMP1/LMP2 portion of qualifying for the 56th Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring when Ben Devlin crashed the Lola B07/Mazda exiting Turn One about seven minutes into the scheduled 25 minute qualifying session for prototypes.

As a result, IMSA officials reverted to the rule book -- specifically sections 9.93 and 9.94, which stipulate that if less than 10 minutes of green flag running is completed, than the grid will be based not on the fastest time of qualifying but of the best times from any previous practice session. That was good news for Audi, which saw its LMP1 R10 of Dindo Capello, Allan McNish and Tom Kristensen move up from P2 to P1 as the result of the ruling, and even better news for Penske Racing, whose two LMP2 Porsche Spyders has yet to turn a qualifying lap when Devlin crashed.

On the other hand, it was bad news for Stefan Sarrazin, whose Peugeot 908 slipped back to second after having posted the fastest lap of qualifying; even worse news for Guy Smith, who posted the fastest time of the abbreviated qualifying session in Dyson Racing’s LMP2 Porsche Spyder and
plummeted all the way back to 10th on the grid (behind a slew of cars that never turned a wheel in qualifying).

Adding insult to injury is the fact that the final practice session was also shortened.

“Rules are rules and the practice session was two minutes shorter than it should have been,” observed Rob Dyson. “When they red flagged it, they kept the clock going and they could not restart it. Since qualifying ran less then half the allotted time, starting positions were determined by practice times. That’s the way the rule is written.
The Dyson Porsche team was among those disappointed. (Fastline photo) » More Photos

“It is too bad, because we do not run practice sessions as qualifying sessions. Plus, they not only penalized the top two classes in this event, the P1 and P2 classes, but the also penalized all the GT guys (who ran their full 25-minute session). I think that is a hollow accomplishment for those who benefited from it. Those that did not benefit from it and got hurt from it are feeling the way that we do, that somehow we were cheated out of a position that we earned.

“The rule has to be changed. I think the rule has to be that when there is a red flag in qualifying,the clock has to be stopped and every reasonable effort made to restart the session.”
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