Harry Tincknell has spoken of his disappointment as he, and the rest of the JOTA Sport team, missed out on the European Le Mans Series title by the finest of margins at Estoril after the weather caused them major frustrations.
Going into the fifth and final race of the year the team – consisting of Tincknell, Simon Dolan and Filipe Albuquerque had a slender two point lead over their nearest rivals and they hoped a strong result would guide their Gibson 015S to the championship crown.
The weekend started well with Albuquerque qualifying the car on pole, and looked to be going great guns during his stint but a massive rainstorm on the 100 minute mark caught out team-owner Dolan and saw the car stranded in the gravel.
Thankfully the car was towed out but once it got back on track after a cautionary pit stop, the team were more than 90 seconds behind the leaders.
It was at that point that Tincknell had his Weetabix and set about overhauling that deficit in the final stage of the race. Some hard charging saw the Nissan factory driver climb to fourth place, but a podium eluded the squad and they finished an agonising four points short of the driver’s championship which went to Greaves Motorsport.
After the race Tincknell said: “I feel pretty devastated to have the ELMS title snatched away in the final race for the second consecutive year after another dominant season. We started every ELMS race from the front row while this race was the first this season that we didn’t finish on the podium. Apart from the championship result, I’ve enjoyed racing with JOTA Sport again. I have loved driving the Gibson this year and personally netted two ‘poles’ and two fastest race laps. My pace was good when I took over Simon, managing to set a series of quick laps including the race’s fastest lap – almost seven tenth’s faster than the second quickest car. But something on the rear wing broke costing me a massive amount of time later in my stint. I’m sure JOTA Sport will come back bigger and stronger in 2016.”
