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Qualifying report

JRM Racing to start Six Hours of Sao Paulo from seventh

#22 JRM HPD ARX 03a Honda: David Brabham, Karun Chandhok, Peter Dumbreck

#22 JRM HPD ARX 03a Honda: David Brabham, Karun Chandhok, Peter Dumbreck

XPB Images

14 September 2012 – JRM Racing will start the inaugural Six Hours of Sao Paulo, the fifth round of the FIA World Endurance Championship, from fourth in class and seventh on the grid. Over a highly competitive 20-minute session in which the privateer LMP1 cars were separated by less than half a second, Scot Peter Dumbreck set a quickest time of 1:24.320 with the HPD-ARX 03a.

#22 JRM HPD ARX 03a Honda: David Brabham, Karun Chandhok, Peter Dumbreck
#22 JRM HPD ARX 03a Honda: David Brabham, Karun Chandhok, Peter Dumbreck

Photo by: xpb.cc

Unfortunately the team was unable to match its earlier morning performance, in which Peter finished in fourth position with a best time of 1:24.138. This time was only 0.6secs from the Toyota and 0.3secs quicker than the next best privateer car, marking the increasingly rapid pace of the #22.

With six hours of racing around the 4.309km twisty Interlagos circuit coming up tomorrow the team is still well placed as it sets out to gain ground in the privateers’ championship. JRM Racing is currently third in the standings, equal on points with Strakka Racing.

Peter Dumbreck:
We are closer than we were in previous rounds of the championship, but I couldn’t match the pace of the earlier session. We were the quickest of the privateers in that practice and it looked very possible to repeat it again in qualifying. When I went out on track it just felt like I had lost the grip I had in the morning. I was going quicker every lap, but the tyres never really peaked. We’ll look at why it happened, but for now we’ll put that behind us and focus on the race. If there is something we can take out of that session it’s that we were very consistent on the times at least.

Nigel Stepney, team manager and chief engineer:
Even though we are closer to the front than ever before, it wasn’t really where we wanted to be and if we are honest, after our performance this morning and yesterday we really expected to be further up the grid. Peter did a good job but we believe that the tyre pressures were not optimized and we didn’t get the ‘peak’ we expected. While it’s a bit of a dent to the pride, as we saw in Silverstone starting position isn’t the be-all and end-all for a six hour race. Our race pace looks very strong and tyre wear has been excellent and these will be very important factors in doing well tomorrow.

James Rumsey, team principal:
Yet again we have seen that the privateer class is incredibly close and you need everything to be completely on the money. We had a small issue and could not set the times we showed we were capable of in the morning. It is a bit of a cliché but a six hour race isn’t won in qualifying, so we shouldn’t be overly disappointed. This weekend we have covered a lot of mileage without any significant technical problems and our pace on longer runs with high fuel has been very promising. These are all very encouraging signs and give us a lot of optimism for tomorrow.

Source: JRM Racing

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