Michael Christensen says that Porsche ‘urgently’ needs to work on the qualifying deficit to rivals Aston Martin and Ferrari after finishing fifth and sixth in the Thursday qualifying session.
The result was enough for both Porsche 911 RSR-19s to qualify for Friday’s Hyperpole qualifying shootout, although the pair of factory Porsches looked at risk of elimination from privateer Ferrari squads Weathertech Racing and Risi Competizione.
“We’re in the Hyperpole – that was our aim,” Christensen said. “Unfortunately, the gap to the fastest in the qualifying is much larger than we expected.
“We urgently need to work on that. Still, I see a lot more potential in the car, which we now need to tap into. I’m confident we’ll manage this.”
Christensen’s stablemate, Gianmaria Bruni, faired slightly better in fifth although admittde he was not content with his performance.
“I managed two clean laps,” said Bruni. “However, the vehicle balance was noticeably better at my first attempt that at the end of the session, so I didn’t manage to improve.
“This is our first time at Le Mans with the latest Porsche 911 RSR. Our setup is not yet optimal. We’ll look at the data and make improvements to the car for the upcoming sessions.”
Porsche had a challenging first day of running with the 911 RSR-19, which makes its debut at Le Mans. The two factory entries were significantly off the pace in opening practice, but improved later on.
Alexander Stehlig, Porsche’s head of WEC operations, admitted that the German squad struggled with its setup early on.
“We had a lot of work to do today. The setup that we’d worked out in advance didn’t really work at first,” Stehlig said. “We made many changes so that the drivers could get more comfortable with the handling of the car. Things went significantly better in the second practice session.
“We made it into the Hyperpole, but we have to do better because we don’t want to start from fifth and sixth, we have to move up at least one more grid row.”
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