Aston Martin Racing driver Darren Turner is confident that the team bounce back in today’s race after a tough FIA World Endurance Championship qualifying session at Silverstone.
The two Dunlop-clad Aston Martin Vantage V8s finished bottom of the pile in GTE-Pro qualifying, while the GTE-Am machine was also out paced by the other manufacturers.
But Turner, co-pilot of the #97 Aston Martin with Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen, believes that the off-par performance was just a blip.
“Qualifying had conditions that we hadn’t done too much running on during the winter,” he told The Checkered Flag. “It wasn’t really wet or dry and the ambient temperature was so low.”
“We’ve learnt a lot from that experience and next week we will do a lot more work away from the race weekend in preparation for Spa, after concentrating first on Silverstone race day. When the sun comes out and the track temperature rises we expect the tyres to be much better.”
“From testing we’ve been really encouraged by the tyres. On Saturday we had the chance of being in the European Le Mans Series race and found that we will probably need to look after the front-left especially during the six hours because it’s taking most of the load in the high speed corners. But I expect that will be the case for most of the cars this afternoon.”
Turner is performing double-duty at Silverstone this weekend, with his FIA WEC commitments following on from a victory with Aston Martin in the ELMS 4 Hours of Silverstone. Although doubling up may be viewed as a challenge, Turner is hoping to use his extra track time to good effect this afternoon.
“It was a good race; we inherited the win at the end when the Ferrari failed at scrutineering but that’s something I’ve been on the wrong end of before so understand how it feels. It was a very good result for Beechdean AMR, I could tell they were pleased with how the car ran and it was a really encouraging start to the season for them.”
“It was great to be in the ELMS event because Richie [Stanaway, driver of the #95 Pro car] and I gained a lot of knowledge before others and that should play into our hands today. Although the tyres are different in the World Endurance Championship, there is still a lot to be gained and understood from racing a day before. It was nice for me to be able to get a few more laps under my belt before today.”
