24 Heures du Mans

JRM Racing to start first Le Mans from 11th position

The team will field a Honda HPD ARX-03a in the top LMP1 class with David Brabham, Peter Dumbreck and Karun Chandhok as its driving line-up.

The team made the best of a difficult day after discovering the gearbox had been damaged in yesterday’s running. The team elected to switch to the race engine as well, thereby lightening the work schedule for tomorrow. As a result it missed most of the earlier qualifying and the work was condensed into the later session, in which Peter Dumbreck exclusively completed. He bettered his time of yesterday to a 3:35.421

David Brabham

I didn’t go out in the car today as I completed more laps yesterday, so it wasn’t a major issue. It’s been a positive practice session as we put all the race gear in and made some changes that have given us a better direction for the race. We’ve come a long way already – I’m sure we can still make some headway before the race.

Karun Chandhok

Yesterday I hit some debris through Tertre Rouge and the car felt like it took off. We didn’t know until we checked thoroughly overnight but the impact of coming back to ground cracked the gearbox. The team then decided to change the engine, which was pretty logical considering we were changing tomorrow anyway. Although I would have liked to drive tonight, I’m just looking forward to getting behind the wheel at my first Le Mans on Saturday.

Peter Dumbreck

It’s been a tough day with a fair few issues but we always knew that as a rookie team in the top class it was going to be that way. The team acted very professionally to get through all the changes and condense the programme into the final session. It will be good to have the day’s break tomorrow to fully understand the information we have and how we can make the most of the race.

Nigel Stepney, chief engineer and team manager

It’s a great feeling to qualify for our first-ever Le Mans. This being our debut, we knew there could possibly be some hitches so we took the precaution of having all our drivers do a minimum of five laps yesterday evening. As it happens this worked out well as we lost the earlier session when we changed the gearbox and the engine. Although we’re not 100% on the set up just yet, clearly our goal has got to be getting to the end and seeing where we are at the finish.

Photo: jakobebrey