Strakka Racing completed two strong days of testing during the FIA World Endurance Championship prologue at Paul Ricard on Thursday and Friday with drivers Nick Leventis, Danny Watts and Jonny Kane.
Kane set the pace on day one in the LMP2 class in the Gibson 015S-Nissan, with that lap time being just 0.002s slower than the outright class pace seen at the French circuit.
Team Principal Dan Walmsley has welcomed the stability within the team during the off-season after continuing with the Gibson for a second season, especially after last years decision to switch from its own Strakka Dome S103 mid-season in 2015.
“The stability of continuing with the Gibson 015S, together with our experienced driver line-up enabled us to cover 1500kms, all trouble-free,” said Walmsley. “Crucially, we demonstrated good pace, topping the day one times, just two thousandths off the quickest time all weekend.
“It follows constructive tests at both Bahrain at the end of 2015 and Aragon this year and for all us a welcome change from the disruption of the past three seasons.”
Team founder and one third of the driver line-up Leventis feels it has been a good start to the 2016 season for the team, and hopes to be competing at the front of a very strong LMP2 field this year.
“It was an excellent start to 2016,” insisted Leventis. “We started with being able to welcome Dell and Xero to the World Endurance Championship, followed by a really strong pace on day and continued reliability on day two.
“It’s going to be a much tougher field in 2016 but we start this year in a much better state, with the engineers having set up a car that is gentle on tyres and still able to deliver on pace.”
