Young Driver AMR leaves Brazil deeply disappointed after a late retirement in the fourth round of the FIA World Endurance Championship (FIA WEC) at Sao Paulo. The Aston Martin Racing entered Young Driver AMR-Aston Martin Vantage GTE of Christoffer Nygaard, Kristian Poulsen und Nicki Thiim dominated its class in the 6h of Sao Paulo. The all-Danish driver trio came short of a finish, when the right rear wheel came off with 70 minutes to go and Young Driver AMR hat to retire.
Young Driver AMR had a perfect run in Brazil: The team’s new addition Nicki Thiim topped the timesheets in the GTE-Am-class in two out of three practise session. In the Qualifying, Nygaard and Thiim secured the class Pole Position. At the start of the race, Thiim went into the lead from Pole Position and from that moment on, the three Young Drivers never looked back. Nygaard/Poulsen/Thiim were not only clear in the class lead, they were also third quickest of all GT cars and even faster then GTE-Pro entries of Porsche and Ferrari.
With only 70 minutes to go in the 6 hour race, clearly in the lead and almost a full lap ahead of the competition, suddenly and unexpected the right rear wheel came off for a still unknown reason, while Poulsen was driving the Aston Martin. As the car came to a standstill in an uphill section of the track, and wouldn’t move on three wheels, Poulsen was left with no chance to bring the car back the pits.
„Obviously, the entire team is bitterly disappointed after what has been a brilliant race of all our three drivers until the wheel came loose”, Young Driver AMR´s Jan Struve said after the race. „We don’t know what happened with the wheel, as it was already on the car for more then 60 minutes and our final pit stop of the race was due one lap later. There were no signs of any problem before, it just came off out of a sudden and we have to investigate the reason. Until then, everybody made a brilliant job. All the engineers and mechanics of Aston Martin Racing did a great job in the couple of weeks to make it happen that we could start here. They did a great job as the car performed perfect all weekend. Our drivers were excellent. They were super quick and didn’t make any mistake. We are really happy that Nicki Thiim joined Young Driver AMR and are delighted that he will race with us also at the next round in Austin in the United States in three weeks.”
Source : Young Driver AMR