2017 FIA World Endurance Championship is on the way, G-Drive racing is determinate to do well for its 2017 season, and the team has shown real potential.
It all started on April 14th on the Silverstone Grand Prix racetrack with good pace in all the free practice sessions (4th in Free practice 1, 1st in Free Practice 2). The car is new, as for all the other competitors, but it feels good, even though everyone knows there will be work to be done to get all the set ups right. The drivers are happy to see that amongst all the new ORECA07 on the grid (a total of 10), the number #26 can be very competitive.
April 15th, Roman Rusinov, Pierre Thiriet and Alex Lynn set the second fastest time of the third and last free practice, continuing to prepare the car for the first 2017 WEC qualifying session.
Reminder: In the WEC championship, the qualifying of the car is made of the average of the two fastest lap times of the two designated drivers. At G-Drive Racing, Platinum driver Alex Lynn and Silver driver Pierre Thiriet did the job. With an average time of 1:44.387, #26 ORECA07 G-Drive Racing set the LMP2 fastest qualifying lap time, thus giving Russian team the honour to set the first LMP2 pole position of the season.
Brit Alex Lynn started the first race of the season, and even if he was passed in the first corner, he showed the great potential of #26 Oreca07 lapping consistently until he encountered a technical problem as the right door was opening while on track. He was therefore forced to come back into the garage for the mechanics to attempt a quick repair, which definitely changed the team’s strategy. French driver, newly introduced to WEC, Pierre Thiriet took his first stint 10 laps ahead of plan, after the repair which was not successful. He was asked by Race direction to come back in, where the team decided to fully change the door. Theses technical problems made the team lose a lot of time, which it was unfortunately unable to make up along the race. Roman Rusinov took over, and even if he managed to set very good lap times, he had to deal with rain and could not make up for the lost time.
WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT THEIR RACE:
Alex Lynn (GBR) :
“ It is obviously very disappointing to come away with a fifth place. We had the pace, all drivers drove well, but the issue we had with the door ruined our chances of getting the win, in addition, the Full Course yellow came at a bad time for us, while it was perfect for other teams. The fact that we had the door issue just before the FCY windows did not play for us, therefore our strategy finally did not work out. It’s a shame for the team because everyone has worked hard, and we lose our potential because of a silly reason. This means that we will have to work harder for the next race in Spa Belgium next month. This technical problem put us out of sequence with all the other teams, and when you are out of sequence it’s black or white, it can be a good key or it can go all wrong together… In our case, it did not help. It’s not our dream start, and it’s not the race we deserve, but we still get points for the championship.”
Pierre Thiriet (FRA):
“ My first FIAWEC race could have been better. First I had to take my stint earlier than planned, which is not a problem, that’s part of endurance. But the first repairs made by our mechanics on the right door, were not successful, therefore I had to come in a second time and we lost a lot of time. It really is a pity, because we started from pole position, and were looking for a good start of the season. In my first stint I was saving the tyres, and therefore I was not quite as fast as I should have, but this was good for my second stint. I had a great car and I could fight with the other ORECA’s. The door problem was really the black point of the week-end.”
Roman Rusinov (RUS):
“ We did not have the race that we wanted to have. The problem with the door is not totally new, and even if we thought it had been dealed with, it was not, and we lost a huge amount of time… basically, it is the time we needed, to stay up front. It’s really a pity because after the super pole position of Saturday, we were confident to have a good race, with a good car, a good line-up… but it did not end up that way. Our strategy was totally messed up, and we will work it out for Spa.”
Xavier Combet, Team Manager:
“ We started a good race week-end with a superb qualification, and this gave us confidence for the race. Our arrival in the FIA WEC championship starting with a pole position was just fantastic. Pierre and Alex did a wonderful job and the race could have gone in the same mood. Unfortunately it did not happen that way, as we encountered, early in the race, that technical problem which made us drop down the classification. In the WEC championship, the competitiveness is so high that it’s really difficult to regain the precious time. We will learn from this race in order to rebuilt confidence. Of course, we are disappointed with the result, but we know it’s the first race and we will have many other occasion to show what we can do. The work done by the team this week-end was really good, so we will come even stronger in Spa.”
