Puegeot sets the pace

As expected, Peugeot qualified 1-2 Friday for today's Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Fresh From Florida and all indications are that the French prototypes will run away with victory.

The real race-within-a-race, officially called the GT2 class battle, should be extremely competitive, based on the simple fact that the top eight GT2 qualifiers were under the track qualifying record.

Oh, what a great season-opening event for the American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patron it should be. With two new classes - Le Mans Prototype Challenge and Grand Touring Challenge - that means there is a 26-second and 25 mph difference between the fastest Peugeot P1 and the slowest GTC Porsche 911 GT3 Cup. The Peugeots should start lapping the GTCs on the seventh lap. That would in the first 10 minutes of a 12-hour event! Can you say get out of the way?

The 58th annual Sebring endurance classic will start at 10:30 a.m. today. The finish, gee, 12 hours later, will be at 10:30 pm. The pace will be flat out and furious every lap except for the anticipated large number of caution flag laps.

Marc Gene of Spain put the No. 07 Peugeot 908 HDi FAP on the pole with a lap of 1:45.214 = 126.599 mph around the 3.7-mile Sebring International Raceway bumpy airport circuit, with Nicolas Minassian of France second in the No. 08 Peugeot at 1:45.841. Third was the No. 007 Lola B09 60 Aston Martin of Stefan Mucke of Germany at 1:46.079 = 125.567 mph.

"On the straights we cannot overtake the Aston Martin," says Gene, who is making his first Sebring start. "For the entire lap, they cannot catch us. For the race, we expect to have the advantage."

GT2 should be the most entertaining battle of the day, even after a technical infraction excluded the No. 90 BMW E92 M3 of Dirk Mueller of Switzerland. He had broken the GT2 track record, but was excluded from the qualifying results after his car failed what they call a "stall test" in post-qualifying inspection. His car will start the race, but in the back of the 14-car GT2 field.

That gave the GT2 pole - and track record - to Joerg Bergmeister of Germany, who turned in a lap of 2:01.150 = 109.946 mph in the No. 45 Flying Lizards Porsche 911 RSR, breaking Jaime Melo's 2007 record of 2:02.434 = 108.793 mph.

Six other cars were under Melo's record - Wolf Henzler in the No. 17 Falken Tires Porsche 911 GT RSR at 2:01.201 = 109.990 mph, Melo in the No. 62 Risi Ferrari 430 GT at 2:01.236 = 109.868 mph, Jan Magnussen in the No. 4 Compuware Corvette C6.R at 2:01.358 = 109.758 mph, Olivier Gavin in the No. 4 Compuware Corvette C6.R at 2:01.628 = 109.514 mph, and Johannes van Overbeek in the No. 01 Patron Ferrari 430 GT at 2:01.914 = 109.257 mph.

Bill Auberlen inherited the top qualifying spot for BMW - seventh at 2:01.922 = 109.250 mph in the No. 92 BMW E92 M3. He is a three-time Sebring class winner, but has not won here since 1998. He does not plan to stay at the back of the GT2 lead pack for very long.

"As far as I'm concerned, I'm not eighth," Auberlen says. "This (qualifying eighth) is something we did to ourselves. We've been basically P1 (position 1) or P2 all week long. Tomorrow P8 is gonna rock. We'll be P7, P6, P5 all the way to the front."

"The BWM press department has put the pressure on us," Mueller said. "It was 35 years ago that BMW scored its first sports car victory, and now they want another one. This will be really, really intense race. Let's face it, there are 20-25 highly talented racing drivers in GT2."

Experts refuse to rate the GT2 field. Any of the top nine qualifiers could win what is expected to be an incredibly tight class war all the way to the checkered flag.

Traffic could play a part in the outcome. For instance, if the overall leader splits the top GT2 cars and the caution comes out, the GT2 leader could gain a lap of the field. Stranger things have happened at Sebring.

They claim they are most interested in grabbing a P2 class victory, but the No. 1 Patron Highcroft Honda Performance Development ARX-01c team has secret dreams of being on the top step of the overall podium.

"Highcroft has achieved so many things (including winning the ALMS P1 championship last year), but Sebring has alluded us," said Marino Franchitti of England, who earned the P2 pole with a lap of 1:47.684 = 123.695 mph in the No. 1 HPD ARX-01c. "Michelin has given us a tire that can take us to winner's circle. It will be interesting to see the balance between P1 and P2. We have a huge amount of prototypes capable of winning."

Leh Keen of Charleston, SC, grabbed the pole for the first-ever GTC class with a lap of 2:05.959 =105.749 mph in the No. 81 Mission Food Porsche 911 GT3 Cup fielded by Alex Job Racing of Tavares.

"This will be like a 24-hour race squeezed into 12 hours," Keen says. "Traffic will be crazy out there. But the thing I've noticed about the P1 and P2 (prototype class) drivers here is that they are very careful in passing the slower cars. They will not take any chances passing us."

Former West Palm Beach resident Gunnar Jeanette was the fastest qualifier in the new LMPC class. He turned a lap of 1:55.279 = 115.546 mph in his No. 99 Oreca FLM09, an automatic record for the new class.

"Sebring is a grueling race," Jeannette said. "I am proud of get the pole for the new class. None of us have many spare parts because everything is so new, so we will be extremely happy to finish."

Up front, Gene credits teammate Minassian for helping him learn how to race at Sebring. "I tried to play video games, but they do not have the bumps," Gene said. "Nic tried to tell me about the bumps, but it was something I had to feel myself.

"There are two very dangerous turns here - turns 1 and 17. There are no corners like that in Europe. If I brought the Formula 1 guys here, they would be shocked and scared at those turns."

So traffic and a bumpy track with two different surface types (concrete and asphalt), very tight and narrow corners and areas of the circuit that in total darkness during the final few hours all add up to the Sebring mystique.

The winner will have to overcome everybody and everything.