The next round of the FIM World Endurance Championship (WEC) takes place at China’s Shanghai track. The sixth round of eight is set to be as competitive as ever with the two regular Dunlop LMP2 teams joined by a two-car Extreme Speed Motorsports entry and the #35 Oak Racing squad. The five cars bring Dunlop’s total of manufacturers to four for this race: Ligier, Morgan, Oreca and Honda/HPD.
The nature of the corners at the circuit makes the track one of the most aggressive on the WEC calendar and the relatively light loading on the right hand side brings the option of splitting tyre compounds. With medium and hard compounds being nominated for this event, teams may choose medium compound for the right hand side with hard for the left, or even just use the medium compound on the front right corner where loading is significantly less. This could provide optimum grip and improve times and performance.
Dunlop’s LMP2 title contenders in the only open tyre competition class are the KCMG Oreca and the G-Drive Ligier, both powered by Nissan engines. Still chasing a points gap after not scoring at the double-point Le Mans round, both are looking for gains on the competition. Both closed the gap at the last round in Japan with G-Drive Racing taking a third win out of five and a point for pole position – the fourth pole of the year for the team. KCMG, winners of the USA round, have a tougher job with a 30 point gap compared to G-Drive who closed the margin to 16.
Dunlop Teams:
26 G-Drive Racing, Ligier Nissan Roman Rusinov, Olivier Pla, Julien Canal
30 Extreme Speed Motorsports, HPD ARX Honda Scott Sharp, Ryan Dalziel, Ricardo Gonzalez
31 Extreme Speed Motorsports, HPD ARX Honda Ed Brown, Johannes Van Overbeek, David Brabham
35 Oak Racing, Morgan Judd David Cheng, Ho-Pin Tung, Mark Patterson
47 KCMG, Oreca 03 Nissan Matthew Howson, Richard Bradley, Alexandre Imperatori
Racing Stat – Twist and Shout – where grip counts
In Fuji’s twisty sector three, the fastest LMP2 time was set by Richard Bradley in the KCMG Oreca. His 44.928 was less than two seconds behind Lotterer’s fastest in the LMP1 Audi and less than 0.8 seconds off the pace of Leimer in the LMP1 Rebellion.
Mike McGregor, Dunlop Motorsport:
“The track next weekend includes a section in which the front left in particular has a continuous load from the start of the first corner to the start of sector three. Our compounds and construction have been designed to work well together so we have the option of tailoring the choice to the track and teams may benefit from splitting the compounds here.
“Of course we will be working as closely as ever with our regular teams to help regain the championship lead but we will also be helping Extreme Speed Motorsports to make sure that they can compete at the same level as the rest by sharing our experience and help them towards their 2015 campaign.”