It was not really a different congifuration, still the Grand Course, but the track was repaved and widened over last winter. The regulars that run there (mostly on the Full Course) have been seeing times ~ 2 sec a lap faster than previous bests. They do make mention of it in one of the side bars in the article that the track is now faster with the changes, but then say they were not going to put any * for the lap times. I do think it was kind of irresponsible of them to keep making comparisons to the previous times though. It makes some of the new cars faster than they are as compared some of the previous cars.
I know this because I was there running the track the day before C&D started testing for the LL. I got to see all the cars getting weighed and ready for the test.