NEWS
12.06.10
After 6 hours – Aston Martin continues to climb up the order at Le Mans
Aston Martin has continued to make progress as the first quarter of the Le Mans 24 Hours draws to a close. Harold Primat (CH) is now at the wheel of the 007 car, which has climbed to sixth place overall thanks to another fast and incident-free run.
The 009 car, now in the hands of Juan Barazi (DK), is running eighth. The classification has been once more compressed by a safety car, which came out just before 21:00.
Adrian Fernandez (MX) completed a triple stint at the wheel of 007, making up one more place to climb from seventh to sixth. The Mexican’s first experience of the LMP1 car in competitive conditions at Le Mans went extremely well, with him stopping only for fuel and tyres as scheduled.
“It’s been really good: maybe the handling of the car was not completely perfect but you adapt to it and we’ve been totally reliable, which is the main thing here,” said Fernandez. “Obviously I wasn’t taking any risks at all because we still have a long way to go. I was actually quite pleased with our pace though: we can stay close enough to the diesel Audis in the corners but then on the straights they blow us away. Still, this is what we expected so now we just have to get on with it.”
Just before 20:00, Fernandez handed over to Primat. The Swiss driver struggled with visibility after his windscreen was sprayed with oil by another car that had hit problems, and he also had a small contact against a fellow competitor while overtaking. However, Primat reported that his Aston Martin was still steering straight so no serious consequences are anticipated as the sun sets over Le Mans.
Sam Hancock enjoyed his first stints in the 009 car and showed impressively consistent pace during his opening run. “It was good, although I probably didn’t feel quite as comfortable behind the wheel as I did during practice and qualifying,” he said. “The most important thing though was that I had the time to settle myself into it and that we had a completely incident-free run. That makes me feel quite confident as we head into the night.”
Juan Barazi also used his first time in the car under race conditions to play himself into the action. Shortly after taking over, he reported a vibration from the wheels, so he made an extra stop for a precautionary tyre change. Afterwards he ran with no problems as the race headed into its seventh hour.
Live race coverage can be found at www.astonmartin.com and www.astonmartinracing.com with additional behind the scenes updates on Facebook; www.facebook.com/astonmartin and through Twitter at www.twitter.com/astonmartin. Eurosport will be broadcasting live throughout the week, while coverage with Radio Le Mans can be found at: www.radiolemans.com.