Practice still to make perfect for Creation.

Creation Autosportif ended of the first of Friday's two Le Mans Endurance Series practice sessions in a comfortable second place on the timesheets, but knew that further track time could only bring dividends ahead of Sunday's Spa 1000km.

Although the team's DBA-Judd was just a few hundredths of a second behind the leading Jota-Zytek, after Nicolas Minassian set a time of 2min 09.485secs early in the one hour session, both team and driver knew that there was pace and performance to be obtained ahead of qualifying.

"The car feels very good," Minassian reported, "We can recognise this car as the one we were used to before our test at Paul Ricard. We have some understeer, but we are only just starting
to work on our set-up, so we can deal with that.

"I am much happier. I took a big gamble to find a clear lap this afternoon, but got the chequered flag instead. I think tomorrow will be all a question of finding a gap in the traffic in order to put together a good lap."

The team continued to work on its race set-up during the second session, keeping new Michelin tyres for today [Saturday]'s all important qualifying session. Afterwards, Minassian's British team mate, Jamie Campbell-Walter, confirmed that the car was 'struggling for speed in a straight line compared with the hybrids', but believed that the team would be back on the pace by qualifying.

"Here we are at the first race of the season and we approach it with some trepidation," said a slightly less confident team boss, Michael Jankowski, "We know the car and the drivers, and we have a good team and a good car, plus we've done a lot of work over the winter. But we had an early wake-up call at Paul Ricard two weeks ago, when we had problems with the handling of the car. Hopefully, those have been resolved.

"We expect to do well, and we'll be disappointed if we don't, but there's a lot of very fast people out there and a lot of good teams. The traffic is going to be a big issue as well. I think the grid is up nearly 25 per cent, which is very good for the series, if not for traffic!"

Team director Ian Bickerton pointed to several big changes to the team as key in the development performance.

"One of the major changes is a full time telemetry/data person, Teena Gade," he admitted, "She's probably one of the most intelligent people I've ever met in my life, and not only looks at the data but can also write programmes for our PI system and Judd system which is proving quite invaluable. She's been helping [technical director] Ian Smith with,not only data, but mathematical stuff, track projections, telemetry as well."

The 25-year old had previously worked as a race engineer, designer and aerodynamicist, most recently with the British Triple Eight touring car team.

"Having her on board full time, together with Ian Smith, is the basis of the biggest change," bickerton continued, "Ian has, over the winter, spent more time helping to develop the car, as well as putting systems in place, which are making it easier to run.

"Along those lines, with KW Motorsport and an aerodynamicist, Ian has spent a lot of the winter in the windtunnel and on the seven-poster rig, helping to develop the aerodynamics of the car, especially some more straight line speed."