WEC – Signatech finally overcomes its bad luck

Signatch-Nissan awaited the Silverstone meeting with impatience and frustration. The French team, which has fielded two Oreca 03-Nissans since the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, was desperate to find its way back to the podium while facing a series of bad lucks which hit the two crews entered. The No. 23 of Franck Mailleux, Olivier Lombard and Jordan Tresson once again missed a great opportunity last weekend with another retirement due to an accident caused by a puncture. Fortunately for Philippe Sinault's team, Nelson Panciatici, Pierre Ragues and Roman Rusinov completed a faultless race to finally secure the first podium of the season by taking third place with only 25 seconds behind the Oreca 03 of ADR Delta victorious with John Martin, Jan Charouz and Tor Graves.

Although the event was contested over a period of six hours, the interventions of the safety car left particularly small gaps at the head of the category. This race was grueling for both the drivers and the rest of the team. “It was a fantastic race! 6 hours of Grand Prix F3, I loved ! », comments Philippe Sinault, the team manager of the team. “The team was exemplary, both in preparing the vehicle, which encountered no problems, and in managing the pit stops. The interventions were the quickest on the set. All these elements contributed to the very good result of the weekend. Pierre had a very good start to the race, Roman a solid double stint and Nelson a quadruple with the knife between his teeth. In a word, the team was fantastic. » The latter is very proud of his performance for his third event at the wheel of a prototype. “Physically, at the end, it was difficult and the traffic management made certain situations very heated: it was full attack for 182 laps, I had a blast. Finding yourself in a fight with drivers like Sarrazin (entered in the Starworks Motorsports HPD ARX 03b where he finished second in LMP2 with Vicente Potolicchio and Ryan Dalziel), endurance is the best! »

Discover the analysis of the 6 Hours of Silverstone carried out by our special correspondents in the new issue of AUTOhebdo, available since Tuesday in digital version for iPad, PC and Mac, and since yesterday on newsstands.