GT2 too close to call at Le Mans
9 June 2010
While the battle at the head of this weekend's Le Mans 24 Hours is likely to be a closed shop between Peugeot and Audi, things will be much more wide open in the GT2 category.
With manufacturer involvement at an all-time high and top-draw professional drivers outweighing the amateurs three to one, a tense battle is guaranteed.
There should also be some intriguing battles in the race for Castrol Rankings positions too.
Defending its title is the Risi Ferrari squad, which once again has Jaime Melo and Pierre Kaffer in its lead entry.
With both drivers defending maximum points from last year, only a repeat performance will keep them in 219th and 280th places respectively.
The same cannot be said of the third driver in the car. Gianmaria Bruni, a long-time Ferrari man, finished sixth in class in an AF Corse-run machine last year, so only needs to improve on that to enhance his current 263rd place.
Former grand prix racer Mika Salo (738) has lost his place in the Risi team and instead taken Bruni's AF seat alongside Matias Russo (583) and Luis Perez Companc (518).
Most attention will be on the second Risi entry though, which features former grand prix winners Jean Alesi (1233) - back at Le Mans for the first time since 1989 - and Giancarlo Fisichella (74), alongside experienced Finn Toni Vilander (425).
Attempting to defeat the Italian machines is the factory Corvette squad, which has scored class wins for six of the last nine years. However, they all came in the GT1 category, and this represents Chevrolet's first foray into GT2.
The speed the car has shown so far indicates that it will be a contender - just as long as the drivers avoid a repeat of the Sebring pit calamity in March.
The crews of both cars are high on Le Mans experience and can boast outright Daytona 24 Hours and Sebring 12 Hours wins plus a number of grand prix starts between them.
Jan Magnussen (254), Johnny O'Connell (291) and Antonio Garcia (173) take one car while Oliver Gavin (313), Olivier Beretta (371) and Emmanuel Collard (367) take the other C6.R. Both should be evenly-matched.
BMW returns to Le Mans as a factory entrant for the first time since winning the race with a prototype in 1999, and has picked the GT2 class for its M3.
Fresh from victory at the recent Nurburgring 24 Hours, Jorg Muller (163) and Uwe Alzen (1966) are joined by World Touring Car star Augusto Farfus (80) in one car - the Brazilian being ranked significantly higher than his co-drivers.
Three-time WTCC champion Andy Priaulx is in the other machine, which is running in an art car livery (pictured) as a throwback to the idea of the 1970s. Dirk Muller (340) and Dirk Werner (391) share with him.
And then there's Porsche, the most successful manufacturer in Le Mans history with 16 wins. While the lack of any prototypes from the German concern mean outright victory is out of the question, GT2 success is well within its grasp.
BMS Scuderia Italia has switched camps from Ferrari and has an impressive line-up of FIA GT2 Champion Richard Westbrook (350), Porsche junior Marco Holzer (727) and double DTM title-winner Timo Scheider (69) - the highest-ranked driver in the class.
If the trio, all of whom are Le Mans rookies, can get to grips with the track quickly, they could provide Porsche's strongest challenge.
They will be pushed hard though by the Felbermayr and Flying Lizard squads though - both of whom failed to get their top cars to the finish last year.
That means that should the Flying Lizard car of Jorg Bergmeister (231), Darren Law (155) and Seth Nieman (unranked) - which won last year's ALMS GT2 crown -finish, all its drivers will gain significant ground in the Castrol Rankings.
The Felbermayr car of Wolf Henzler (333), Richard Lietz (519) and Marc Lieb (497) is probably just about the best of the Porsche line-ups, the latter pair having won last year's LMS GT2 crown and both races this year.
This is Le Mans though. And with Jaguar, Aston Martin and Spyker machines waiting in the wings if things do go wrong for the favourites, anything could happen.
The Castrol Rankings is based on drivers' measurable performance over the last 12 months, including everything from their grid position to fastest laps. For further information on how the Castrol Rankings scores are calculated, click here.
