Photo by: Lucien Harmegnies
CRS FACES ITALIAN CHALLENGE
CRS Racing has just had a busy weekend at Imola for the latest round of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup and Le Mans Series. The Imola track is new to most of the CRS drivers so familiarisation was the order of the day at the start of the weekend. Once the drivers got up to speed the lap times started to fall and all six drivers were able to post competitive times.
The six-hour race on Sunday provided many challenges for the two driver squads. Roger Wills, Pierre Ehret and Shaun Lynn had a good run in the No.62 CRS Ferrari and came home in fifth place.
“I started the race and straight away I felt that the car was moving around quite a bit,” explained Wills. “I was on the tyres we used in qualifying which had been good but as the track temperatures went up we started to struggle. For my second stint I opted for the hard tyre and the car was immediately much better. All in all both of my stints felt pretty good and I was happy with my lap times. The thing to remember about this race is that we have had so little track time here so we are learning the track while we are still learning the car. It’s incredible when you consider all of this that we had six good hours of racing without a single safety car period. All but one of the GTE-Am cars finished and I think we did a great job for a fully all-amateur squad so we’re pretty happy.”
On the other side of the CRS garage Adam Christodoulou, Phil Quaife and Klaas Hummel also had a good run, despite a penalty that also befell the sister car.
“Adam started the race for us and he made a good start, gaining a lot of ground during his run,” said Quaife. “We lost a little time in the changeover to Klaas as we struggled a bit with the belts but he got out there and did a good job for us. He had a bit of a lock up at one point and unfortunately this damaged the tyre so he had a blowout a few laps later so that set us back a bit. I got in after Klaas and the car felt good so I was able to start our fight back but we were a fair way behind by then. We had some good battles during the race and were enjoying our runs but then we got a penalty very near to the end because of the cockpit temperature. Our sensor told Race Control that the cockpit was 34 degrees and the maximum allowed is 32 so we were forced to pit and get the temperature down. It’s disappointing as it didn’t feel like it was too hot to us! I think we have learnt a lot here though and I have to say that I absolutely love this circuit. I really enjoyed driving the car here as it was very quick and very easy to drive.”
There is a break in the ILMC action now until September when the series heads to Silverstone for its next instalment. The British GT Championship is in action again in just a few days when the next round takes place at Spa.
by: crs racing
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