G-Drive Racing Wins Second Consecutive Round Of FIA World Endurance Championship
KCMG qualified the Oreca 03 Nissan on pole position for the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) 6 Hours of Spa after a gripping session on Saturday evening with a drying track and dusk conditions. A change onto slicks gave second driver Alexandre Imperatori faster times and a late call by the team to return Richard Bradley to the car with time for one flying lap brought down the four-lap average enough to take the top spot in the very last moments.
After leading the class in the first hour, an early stop with a damaged dive plane after hitting bodywork debris effectively hindered KCMG, thereafter suffering from impaired aerodynamics. From there G-Drive Racing, in the Morgan Nissan had a straightforward race and led apart from during pit-stop phases. The battle for second was strong between the Zytek Z11SN Nissan of Jota Sport and KCMG, and it was only a debris puncture for the latter in the last hour that finally decided the order on the podium. The winning car finished two full laps ahead of the non-Dunlop runners at the Belgian track.
Dunlop nominated the medium and hard compound slick tyres for the event and the three teams used both options, in isolation and together in a split compound strategy. The hard compound was used for triple stints of approximately two hours while the medium compound was capable of double stinting.
Roman Rusinov, G-Drive Racing:
“The car was very good. We could manage the tyres. The tyres were working perfectly during two stints and we could manage the same lap time at the beginning as at the end of the stint. So I’m happy about the car. The team did a great job. We have a good car….. This is a good position before Le Mans. We won the first two races. Now we need to do it at Le Mans but I think we can manage it. I have a good team, I have a good car, we have perfect tyres to do the job and I have Olivier and Julien to manage good lap times.”
Jean-Felix Bazelin, General Manager, Dunlop Motorsport Europe:
“Our three teams did a great job today with three different manufacturers and three different tyre strategies using both compounds. KCMG was able to triple stint the hard compound and Jota easily managed to double stint the medium. We had feedback from several drivers throughout the race about the consistency of the tyres which is so important in endurance racing. Many congratulations to G-Drive Racing who put in lap after lap of consistent times to win the race. All our drivers did very well and we can now look forward to great racing for 24 hours at Le Mans.”