Two days of cold drizzle had spread into a third when Saturday dawned damp and miserable. Times from the day’s first qualifying session were hardly inspiring, being two seconds or more off the practice pace. “We didn’t run too strong,” explained Erdos. “We knew the forecast, so held things for the afternoon. If other people wanted to push, fine, but we didn’t see the point.”

Afternoon conditions improved and times fell steadily. Erdos, who had completed a brief string of exploratory laps, pitted briefly before heading out to attempt a flyer on fresh tyres. “We don’t have qualifiers, since you have to start the race with the same rubber, so they were standard race tyres,” clarified Erdos. His second lap was a 1:44.973, which threw him up to third in the order, but just as he was gearing up to attempt something quicker there was a loud bang from the rear of the car. “It just snapped,” said Erdos in surprise. “There was no warning whatsoever. I was coming into the first corner at the end of the straight, and the car suddenly skipped sideways. The right rear shaft had snapped and I was only getting drive to one wheel.” He cruised gently back to pitlane, but with no chance of repair before the session closed Erdos had to be content with his earlier time. Sure enough, as the period drew to a close his time was bettered by three others, dropping the #7 to sixth. “That was disappointing,” he conceded, “but we’ve had several new developments that we’ve been trying on the car this weekend, and this is the first time they’ve all been applied together.