Jota Sport AMR: Successful race at Silverstone
Sunday, September 11, 2011
In the penultimate race of the 2011 Le Mans Series, Jota Sport AMR has finished the Autosport 1000km of Silverstone 11th in class at the hands of Simon Dolan, Sam Hancock and Chris Buncombe. The 79 car of the three British drivers has run seamlessly throughout the six hours, which is a testamony to how well the Jota Sport team prepared and engineered the car.
From the onset of the weekend things were looking promising for the British team with strong pace throughout the free practice sessions. However, despite such quick pace Sam Hancock was unfortunately unable to qualify the car any higher than P11 due to traffic caused by a yellow flag.
Sam Hancock started the race for Jota Sport AMR with a two-hour double stint; producing some of the best lap times ever enjoyed by the British team whilst running the Aston Martin Vantage GT2.
Sam Hancock: “I am really happy with the pace that we have shown, it’s our strongest performance of the year, and certainly in my first stint we were matching the pace of the cars at the top of our class. Half way through my second stint I was hit by a Ferrari on the right side of the car just coming out of turn 3, which consequently affected the steering. After taking a cautious subsequent lap I was forced to continue to drive with a margin of safety. Then to add insult to injury I was hit on the other side by a Formula Le Mans car. It’s an aggressive race today, it is the nature of the series as we know and the prototypes expect all other cars to move out of their way. Overall I am really pleased with how today has gone and hope that wherever Andy is watching from we have managed to do him proud.”
After two hours Sam handed the car over to Simon Dolan for his double stint. Simon immediately got into a good rhythm producing some of his best lap times of the season.
Simon Dolan: “I experienced a little bit of traffic when I first got in the car but overall my first of the two consecutive stints was great, I was really pleased with the speed of the car and fortunately could only feel a minor affect on the steering from the earlier incident. However, by the second stint the tyres were well worn and we consequently dropped a few places on the grid, which was very frustrating as I pretty much had a trouble-free run. It has been superb driving here in front of the home crowd and having all my friends and family supporting from the paddock.”
At the fourth round of pit stops Simon handed the reigns of 79 to Chris Buncombe for the final double stint of the race.