Karun first driver for JRM, to start 11th on the Grid
Le Mans (France), 15 June 2012: Indian racing star Karun Chandhok’s JRM Racing will start its first-ever Le Mans 24 Hours from 11th position. 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.
With the team missing most of the earlier qualifying session Chandhok did not get a chance to run and will head into the historic race with a mere 18 laps under his belt. The team which will field a Honda HPD ARX-03a in the top LMP1 class, has drivers David Brabham and Peter Dumbreck partnering the young Indian.
While Chandhok did not get a chance to go out he was excited about starting his first ever Le Mans race. He commented, “We seemed to have a gearbox problem after hitting some debris in yesterday’s practice. 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. The atmosphere here has been electrifying with the pit lane packed with fans at 11:30 at night! The race is going to be tough so look forward to crossing the finish line. ”
Team Manager and Chief Engineer Nigel Stepney commented, “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.”
The race can be seen live at www.fiawec.com and live onboard streaming can be seen live from www.jrm-racing.com
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