The Andrettis, teamed with Phillipe Alliot, had to do the fuel consumption sums for their Kremer 956 on paper but got up to a tantalizing second before being visited by reality. Their pace had simply used too much fuel. The Andrettis were racers, and the notion of pedaling around on an economy run offended their core sensibilities. But, they went into cruise mode anyway. The Rothmans Porsches had no such troubles.
New plugs didn t cure it.
By midnight, Porsches 956s filled the top 10, problems or not. It was not the sort of fraught pursuit that brought the crowd to its feet, but it was a fine adult performance. During the normal sequence of carefully planned pit stops the No. 1 car actually led, briefly. The Rothmans intramural broke out in earnest at dawn. He changed the metering unit and made it home.