There was drama for Status Grand Prix 38 minutes before the halfway mark of the Le Mans 24 Hours when the car went off the circuit.

Alexander Sims was at the wheel and had just nursed the team’s Lola-Judd B12/80 Coupe back to the pits with a puncture. He was on his out-lap when he hit the tyre wall at the Indianapolis curve.

The car was towed out of the gravel by a rescue vehicle, and Sims was able to bring it back to the pits. The car was being repaired as the 12-hour point was reached, and it rejoined the circuit having been delayed by 45 minutes.

The main damage included the front-suspension shrouds (although not the suspension itself), with the wheel-speed sensors and electrics replaced.

On Status GP’s debut at Le Mans, the incident illustrated the pitfalls that are common here after running strongly in the top eight in the LMP2 class.

The team had managed to spend some time in sixth position, depending on the timing of pit stops, and was within two laps of the class lead when Sims suffered his puncture.

Frenchman Romain Iannetta had been at the wheel at quarter-distance and spent much of his first two stints behind the safety car, but got eight laps of racing under his belt before handing over to Yelmer Buurman in 10th place.

Buurman had the worst of the track conditions, as numerous incidents left gravel on the track in many of the corners. He played it cautiously, and managed to quadruple-stint his Dunlop tyres as the race headed into the night.

Sims then had a strong run, trading seventh position with the other Irish team in the race, Murphy Prototypes. But the accident had relegated the Lola to 14th in the LMP2 class by the race’s midpoint.

Status GP team manager Simon Cayzer said: “The important thing now is that the car is back out on track. Alexander did an outstanding job to nurse the car back on both occasions without any further damage – after the crash he had no headlights. The boys did a great job to fix everything and we’ll keep plugging away.

“Romain did some good consistent driving, and Yelmer coped well with the difficulties of doing a quadruple stint with the tyres – that was very good.

 “Reliability has been good. Since the beginning of the race our only real delay had been taking a minute to top up the engine oil. Going into the second half of the race we’ll just keep pushing for a finish.”

Romain Iannetta:
“The car was OK, but after the safety car the tyres were very cold. It was very hard to drive so I had to build my speed back very gently.”

Yelmer Buurman:
“My biggest problem was so many slow cars on my stint. I would come up to them and they couldn’t see the blue flags. And off-line there was so much gravel that I had to be super-conservative. We were sacrificing a bit on the straights, but the car was very quick in the corners.”

Alexander Sims (on car-to-pit radio):
“A massive, massive thank you to you, guys. Car is fine.”

Source : Status Grand Prix