It was a case of an early shower under the perfectly blue skies in Round 5 of the European Le Mans Series at Spa Francorchamps this afternoon (25 September, 2016) as LeSports by Eurasia Motorsport were forced to retire the #33 Oreca Nissan on the opening lap of the scheduled four-hour race.
Having qualified a strong fourth, Tristan Gommendy lined up on the second row of the grid and held station until half way around the opening lap when the troubles hit. Exiting Bruxelles, the car slewed sideways with an obvious problem on the left rear corner. As Gommendy straightened the car out, the rear rim departed from the car and the Frenchman duly opted to pull the car off and retire.
“I’ve only seen it on the TV obviously, but it looks like some kind of stub axle failure,” explained LeSports by Eurasia Motorsport Team Principal Mark Goddard. “We probably won’t even get the car back until after the race to know for certain, but it’s a concern not knowing for sure. Either way we’re out of the race on lap one and that’s never something I want to say.
“In saying that, it’s a been a good weekend – up until that point anyway – Kevin (Pu Jun Jin) picked up the pace well after his incident at La Castellet and Nick (de Bruijn) was on his game,” Goddard continued. “There’s not much else to say other than we’ll be looking into the cause of the failure and we’ll then look forward to Portugal.”
The final round of the European Le Mans Series gets underway at Estoril, 21-23 October.
