Alex Lynn feels his LMP2 class pole position made him ‘really proud’ on his 24 Hours of Le Mans debut, and says his pole time came with performance to spare for the race itself.
The G-Drive Racing driver was under the cosh to deliver a good lap, having only a single run to qualify the #26 ORECA-Gibson. Despite the added pressure from the situation, Lynn was elated with his performance in Thursday night’s opening session, in which he recorded his pole position lap of 3:25.352.
“I’m just really proud, to be honest,” he said to Autosport. “It’s my first Le Mans and to be on pole position is everything I could dream of.”
Despite being two tenths faster than his nearest competitor for LMP2 pole, Lynn suggested that the TDS Racing prepared package was far from being in qualifying trim, and was set-up with the race in mind.
“Genuinely, we didn’t compromise anything, in fact I would say we were on the limit of sacrificing everything for race pace,” he said. “We didn’t use many sets of tyres at all, we were always doing long runs, we literally went for one shot in quali right at the start of Q3 and we didn’t even get an attempt in Q2.”
“Luckily, it was all that we needed.”
Lynn is confident that so long as the ORECA-Gibson package he shares with co-drivers Roman Rusinov and Pierre Thiriet stays reliable, they will have a good chance of class victory come Sunday afternoon.
“I feel like the pace in the car is not the question, if it’s going round the drivers will drive it quickly. It’s just a question of making sure we keep it out of the garage for the 24 hours and we have a clean race. If we have a clean race, I’ll be surprised if we’re not at or near the front.”