After a successful 2022 in the Belcar and Supercar challenge, we felt like it was time to take the next step for the 2023 season.
And so, we did, we took on the first round of the Michelin Le Mans Cup for Haegeli by T2 Racing. Even though the Michelin Le Mans Cup is one of the toughest and most competitive series in European racing, we still were aiming for a points finish.
The Michelin Le Mans Cup is an extremely competitive due to a mandatory bronze driver, in our case this is my former Norma-teammate Pieder Decurtins. As a bronze driver you have a few extra responsibilities like a mandatory bronze driver test and having to qualify the car. This ensures for a more diverse grid in which a lot for action can happen.
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The week started off with a day of collective testing on Tuesday, we used the morning session the get everything working like it should be and to perfect the car’s setup. Together with the Haegeli by T2 Racing team we managed to quickly adapt ourselves to the car, track and the competition. My teammate and myself tried to get as many laps in as possible, as we ended up P24 in the session.
In the afternoon session we had already optimized our setup to our liking and were now focused on getting some good and quick lap times in. We both managed to do so as my fastest lap ended up being the 5th fastest time of the afternoon session and giving us an overall 9th fastest time of the day.
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After a rest of two days, we were fully recharged and ready to go into the weekend. We had already collected all the data we needed from the collective test so our main objective for the practice sessions on Friday were to stay out of any trouble as the Michelin Le Mans Cup practice sessions were red flagged frequently. At this point we had more to lose then to win so we decided to not push flat out and to just keep a steady pace. We still got in a number of solid practice laps without pushing the car or the tyres at all. The result was a P24 in the first practice and a P27 in the second practice.
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Saturday was the big day: qualifying and race. Our bronze driver Pieder was obligated to do the qualifying. In a competition as the Michelin Le Mans Cup where all the cars are so tightly packed, the team did an amazing job getting Pieder into clean air for his flying laps. He did a good job and qualified the car in 11th place. A good starting position to aim for points later that day.
We opted to let Pieder take the start of the race for strategical reasons, he was able to profit from the chaos and get himself up into 9th place before a third safety car of the day enabled us to switch drivers and get myself into the car. A brilliant move by the team as we got a “free” pitstop during that period.
I got out behind the safety car in a really good position but got boxed in by a slower GT3 car in the higher speed sections of the circuit. Here I lost the connection to the top 5 who pulled away instantly. I managed to get into a fast and consistent rhythm for the rest of the race.
A good competitive pace during the stint put me really in the mix to fight for some big points. As I started to close in on the guys in front of me, we were given a penalty for not compiling to the mandatory pitstop time. A mechanical failure with our timer inside the car resulted in a too fast pitstop and that meant we got a stop-go penalty of 4 seconds, resulting in a loss of about 25 seconds. A real shame as that penalty put us back into P13 while we were comfortably running in P8 and had a real big chance on closing down P7. With only 2 laps remaining after our second pitstop we didn’t have enough time to fight ourselves back into the points.
Despite the result not being what we wanted or being what we deserved. We take away the positives from the weekend. The potential to fight for good points is there.
Can’t wait to get back into the car and get racing again and to collect those important points for the team. The next one will be the big one of the Michelin Le Mans Cup season with 2 races on the Le Mans track (8-9/06) in support of the 24h of Le mans.
A big thanks to the whole Haegeli by T2 Racing team, my sponsors and everyone else who has supported us during the past couple of weeks, months and years.
See you in Le Mans!
