Date: 11.09.11
James Walker had to settle for ninth place in the Le Mans Series
race at Silverstone this afternoon when an early race encounter
with an Audi created a setback for the JMW Motorsport team.
The result didn't reflect the performance of the team this weekend
with both James and his team mate Rob Bell fully on the pace of
their top rivals throughout the race meeting.
Conditions were tricky at Silverstone this weekend with
'four-seasons-in-one-day' weather and red flags curtailing practice
time. Despite the lack of running James reported that the car
felt good and the team felt confident heading into Saturday's
qualifying session.
Unfortunately when Rob Bell was on his hot lap a spinning Corvette
brought out the yellow flags and he had to back off and could only
take ninth place on the grid.
"Rob started the race today and was going great until he was hit
by Allan McNish in the Audi," explained James. "The real blow
though came almost an hour later. By that time I was in the car and
we were really getting into the rhythm then we got a one minute
stop-go penalty for the Audi incident! This put us a lap down and
you just can't recover from that in a Le Mans Series race."
"It's a shame as our pace was good today," he continued. "Both of
my runs were consistent and I think we deserved better. We
have to take the positives from it though, namely the fact that the
car ran faultlessly throughout the race. We're looking forward to
Estoril now. I know the track well from World Series and I think we
will be quick there."
The Estoril race, which is the Le Mans Series season finale, takes
place in just two weeks' time on 25 September.
ENDS