Michelin Le Mans Cup

Rd.3, Le Mans, Race Report

Round 3 of the Michelin Le Mans Cup Championship, took place at Le Mans as a support race for the 24hr race. It was amazing to get going on the iconic circuit once again on Wednesday, for FP1 & FP2. We didn’t have much track time before heading into qualifying on Thursday morning, but the pace was excellent in both sessions and we ended the day P2, I was happy with the things that we had tested on the car and confident Jacques and myself could do a good job with what we had. Unfortunately for me the qualifying was a messy session full of slow zones, which meant I couldn’t fight for the pole position, but to still qualify P7 whilst being blocked and having a yellow flag. I was happy and looking forward to getting to work in the races. Jacques did a mega job in the bronze qualifying session placing the car P4 on the grid for race 2.

Race 1 took place on Thursday evening, whereupon Jacques had a great start moving quickly from p7 to P4 and had great pace. Towards the end of his stint, he was overtaken by a few of the Pro-Drivers, so we entered the pits for our driver change in P6. After some early overtakes I was into P3 and chasing down the two leaders. Our pace was excellent and I managed to catch them and get into P2 where I would cross the line taking a 1-2 for the team.

Race 2 was Saturday morning and we had another great chance by starting P4. Jacques brought the car in P5, and drove another great stint. There was a safety car from the beginning of my stint to the final two, and so halted any further progress to then. With the race back green, we quickly moved to P4 and were right in the battle for the lead. Unfortunately we had to pit to serve a stop/go penalty on the final lap, because of the pit stop time being 4/100ths of a second too quick. It was an unfortunate way to end our great weekend. Overall I’m over the moon to stand on the podium at Le Mans, and throughly looking forward to Rd.4 at Monza in a couple of weeks time. I would like to say a huge thank you to all of the team for their continued hard work.