Franck Mailleux has had a busy night and early morning with the #23 Signatech-Nissan Oreca 03 with a competitive quadruple stint in the early part of the night and a further four stints this morning.

Franck’s competitive quadruple stint last night helped the team to fifth in LMP2 and 11th place overall. Franck was pleased with the car and reported good progress before handing over to team-mate Olivier Lombard shortly after 3am.

Unfortunately, Lombard went off track in the early phase of his stints, causing damage to the front right suspension. Nursing the car back to the pits, the Signatech-Nissan team worked wonders to repair the car, checking front and rear end, and getting the car back out in 36 minutes. Once back out on track, the team had dropped to 11th in class and on the cusp of the top 20 overall.

Franck had a brief off track excursion at the start of his first morning stint, losing some time but he put in a series of quick laps to resume his mission to claim back positions. On handing the car over to Lombard at 11.30, the #23 car was 16th overall and 8th in LMP2.

Franck said: “I was very satisfied with my competitive quadruple stint during the night and to see our car continue a strong fight back to be top five in class. The car was behaving well and we found ourselves in good shape. Unfortunately, Olivier had an incident which caused quite a bit of damage to the car but the team worked incredibly well to repair the damage and minimise the time lost. These things happen at Le Mans and it is all about how we, as a team, react. I had another competitive quadruple stint this morning. I got caught out at the start of my first stint and went off briefly, which was frustrating, but I put in a series of very quick laps and had a good run. It’s hard to make up the positions we lost overnight but we keep pushing in these final hours to finish as high up as possible.”

Source : Franck Mailleux