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Ricardo Gonzalez: “It’s all about the team we have”

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Ricardo Gonzalez started life as a team owner in the best possible manner as he teamed up with Bruno Senna and Filipe Albuquerque to secure class victory in the Six Hours of Silverstone.

Along with support from Morand and Onroak, the Mexican racer set up RGR Sport by Morand, and despite tricky conditions at the Silverstone circuit during the weekend, the team were able to come out on top of the LMP2 class.

Despite taking victory, Gonzalez admitted he had no idea where the team stood compared to the opposition heading into the weekend.

“[It started] The best way,” revealed Gonzalez to The Checkered Flag. “We knew since our first test that we were ready to give a battle, and we had a great package with the Ligier, the Nissan and the driver line-up, but this is a very tough year for LMP2 competition wise.

“We had no idea, not even in Paul Ricard, who the competition were going to be.  You maybe had an idea, but [not] how strong you are going to be against them. 

“During the weekend with the weather that we had and everything that happened, it still was not clear, so the race was the first time that we could see and I think we have a better idea of who we are going to be fighting the rest of the season.”

Gonzalez praised the team that assisted RGR Sport by Morand to victory, including his team-mates Senna and Albuquerque, as well as the people from Morand and Onroak.

“It’s all about the team we have,” insisted Gonzalez. “We started the team quite early and we got to choose the people we wanted to have around.

“Everybody within the team is very experienced, we have the support from Jacques [Nicolet], we have the support from Onroak, from Morand, we got a good group of people, and you’re only as good as the people behind you.

“Everybody did their job, like you saw this weekend we didn’t get much time running in the dry, so the set-up of the car was kind of a flip to what we thought would work, the car was very nervous to drive, was not easy. 

“We were the whole time taking care of the tyres because we knew it was going to be an issue towards the end of the second stint, and we did that and we found that we had a huge drop in the tyres at the end of the that second stint, but we managed. Traffic was not easy, and I think both Filipe and Bruno did a great job.”

Looking ahead to the next round at Spa-Francorchamps, Gonzalez believes a repeat victory might be difficult, especially against the quick Oreca cars down the long straights, but believes another mistake-free weekend would put them in contention.

“Fingers crossed, a lot of work in between and it’s going to be a tough race again,” said Gonzalez.

“I think the Oreca with the long straights are going to be hard to beat but again we need to do a race free of mistakes, hopefully we can do it, and we’ll be in good shape.

“I can tell you it’s not going to be easy, we saw a lot of things that could be better [at Silverstone], and from Tuesday we are going to start working on that.

“We were lucky this race to have the gap we had at the end and we were just managing tyres and being careful. I don’t expect this for other races, but we need to keep on getting our game up.”

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