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WEC 24 Hours of Le Mans
GTE Pro pacesetter Garcia predicts record-setting Le Mans pace
Corvette Racing’s Antonio Garcia has predicted that GTE Pro cars will be faster than ever at Le Mans this year, after setting the quickest time in Sunday’s Test Day.
Charles Bradley
Edited: Jun 7, 2016, 8:56 PM
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Garcia topped the class with a lap of 3m55.122s on Sunday, 0.28s faster than Nick Tandy’s Porsche 911. Although this is someway off Gianmaria Bruni’s pole time from 2014 of 3m53.700s for Ferrari, Garcia believes the track will be much faster next weekend.
“The new GTE Pro cars have changed,” Garcia explained. “In this low-downforce trim we are very fast on the straight compared to last year – with a little bit more downforce too.
“Actually we are at least two or three seconds faster than last year at the test. I don’t know how fast we will be on qualifying or during the race but for sure so far, if the track is supposed to be green now, I mean, it would be way, way finer during the race.”
Garcia was forced to withdraw from last year’s Le Mans after teammate Jan Magnussen suffered a chassis-wrecking crash in Thursday qualifying.
“I really struggled not be racing last year,” he admitted. “But it’s always good to be back here.
“It’s always good to be fastest too; that shows that we have potential. But at the end you look through all the lap times and we are all very close, so it could have been almost every car on the first place today.
“For sure, it gives you a little bit more confidence to be up there, so I’m happy with how the test went. It went very, very smooth.”
Chevy versus Ford
Garcia is relishing the chance to take on the four-strong Ford GT assault, which comes 50 years since the Blue Oval won the Le Mans 24 Hours with its iconic GT40.
“It’s always good to have a manufacturer back and to have such a big manufacturer like Ford is really, really good for us,” said Garcia, who has been racing against the Ford in the US-based IMSA series. “We saw that during the initial part of the season back in America. We seem to have a really strong line-up of cars over there and we showed today that.
“I mean, the CORE Porsches were back up there [second and third fastest] – it was like eight cars coming from the American championship! Ford is also a very big brand for us, because everybody would be looking at that comparison to see who is ahead of the other one.
“But the main thing is no matter what the other manufacturer is, we need to win. So whoever comes second, I’m good with that. I’m confident. I mean, we won as a team the first two races, the first two big races, Daytona and Sebring, so I hope to repeat what we did last year and win again here.”
Additional reporting by Erwin Jaeggi
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