David Brabham was hanging on the edge with the #9 Highcroft Racing Acura in qualifying for the tenth anniversary edition of Petit Le Mans, but was rewarded with third in the highly-competitive LMP2 class.
Brabham, the 1999 race winner, slid the bright blue ARX.01a around the repaved twelve-turn course to clock a run of 130.629mph, an effort all the more impressive since the Highcroft car had to be repaired after a morning incident in the rain tore up the rear wheel and bodywork. Australian Brabham reported that the car was extremely loose on his qualifying run, but he continued to press on to set a time more than a second quicker than the LMP2 track record set last year by Lucas Luhr.
There was a lot of body work to replace before qualifying but, luckily, the gearbox and suspension were okay," Brabham reported, "The Highcroft team did a tremendous job getting the Acura back together for qualifying. "The car was on the edge there, and I was hanging on for a long time. The car was very loose, but that might have been the case for everyone."
Not knowing quite what to expect after a difficult week of practice, Brabham bided his time before making his run as the weather continued to play tricks on the ALMS field.
"I could see that the track was very dirty from the earlier rain so we waited in the pits to go out for qualifying," he said, "Once the track was pretty clean, we went out for a flying lap.
This is a great result for us especially after the week we've had. We've had a lot of set-up issues this week, but we finally got a great car for qualifying. The good thing that came out of the difficulties is that it has shown us in which direction
not to head. We'll look at today's set up, analyze it and see what we want for tomorrow. That is half the battle when you go into the Petit.
![David Brabham - Highcroft Racing Courage-Acura ARZ-01a [pic credit: ALMS]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/346826.jpg)
