All American crew lead Panoz charge on opening day of Petit Le Mans

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Posted 2:53PM on Thursday, October 10, 2002

Panoz Motor Sports' all-American combination of Bryan Herta, Bill Auberlen and Gunnar Jeannette headed the Panoz "Spirit of America" challenge at the Audi Presents Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta today. Herta stopped the clocks at 1:12.872 around the team's home circuit to place the Panoz LMP-01 as the fifth fastest car on the opening day of practice. The performance repeated the improved form of the #51 machine which has been the fastest Panoz qualifier in the past two races. "Today has certainly been a very positive start to the weekend and hopefully we can build on this throughout the week," Herta said. "The traffic out there was pretty amazing and I was worried I would have lost the chance to get the best out of the tires. "However, Michelin have done a brilliant job. The tire performance was very consistent and didn't drop off at all as we did longer runs. That is a very good sign for the race. "I already feel really comfortable in the car. We have a little bit of understeer in the high speed stuff but the traction is very good." The #50 Panoz of Jan Magnussen, David Brabham and David Donohue endured a troubled day with a power steering problem cutting short their on-track time. Their fastest time of 1:14.442 left them in 8th position overall. "The power steering problem was a bit disappointing, but hopefully we have all our bad luck out the way early," Magnussen said. "Like the other car, we had the same dramas with traffic but that is something we have to deal with and hopefully use to our advantage. "It is going to get very busy out there with 50 cars on track. There is more cars than the Le Mans 24 Hour on a track that is actually shorter. There should be plenty of action for the race fans."