Bruno Senna knows Sunday’s Six Hours of Silverstone will be tricky after the track conditions during practice and qualifying will probably not reflect those of the race.
The RGR Sport by Morand driver and team-mates Ricardo Gonzalez and Filipe Albuquerque will start third in the competitive LMP2 class at the British circuit, and should the expected dry Sunday arrive, it’ll be the first real time all weekend where teams will be running long runs on dry tyres.
“It’s been okay, I think our car was quick enough in the wet, perhaps not as quick as it wanted to be in the dry, so we were fighting it a little bit,” revealed Senna to The Checkered Flag.
“It’s been a tricky race weekend, lots of weather changes and very cold temperatures but we qualified P3, we know we had more in the bag so it’s a bit of a shame but tomorrow’s race will be interesting,
“It’ll be the first time everyone’s driven on a proper dry track, apparently, and especially as the track rubbers up it’ll be very tricky. Yesterday in FP2 when it was dry there were a lot of marbles on the track because the track was green so to deal with the traffic could be a disaster, it’s going to be tough to deal with traffic.”
The Brazilian is unsure where the team are in the dry conditions but feels the pre-season testing programme bodes well as they showed good long run pace.
“We started the weekend with the expectation to fight for the win, but I’m not exactly sure where we are with the dry pace in the long runs,” said Senna.
“In pre-season testing, so far our long run pace has been better than some other people, the ultimate lap time not quite as good as some other guys. We hope we can make the tyres last and go from there.”
Senna knows the 24 Hours of Le Mans is the important race of the season for the team, but is hoping for a competitive season all round, believing the new team can fight for the overall LMP2 title.
“It’s fantastic, it’s a strong championship,” said Senna. “LMP2 is probably the strongest series in the championship right now and it’s always nice to go to Grand Prix circuits where I’m quite familiar with. I seem to know all the tracks we race this year apart from Mexico, but nobody knows that track.
“The first ambition is Le Mans, of course it’s going to be very tough, but when we started this team we really had quite strong ambitions to win the championship and the races, so we push for every race.”
Senna believes the RGR Sport by Morand team has the potential to be good this season in their debut season, and rates both his team owner/driver Gonzalez and team-mate Albuquerque highly.
“I know Ricardo, he has a very good track record of course,” said Senna. “Filipe as well has a very good track record, [and for] the team it was very important to get the right car and the right team,
“We knew with the good support from Onroak, we’d be able to make the most out of this, for them as well it’s good to have a strong car like ours giving feedback, and everything seems pretty good to me and so far it’s been proving itself right and hopefully we can make the results count our way.”
