Jann Mardenborough is again joining Carlin to make his return to GP3, the F1 feeder series, in addition to competing in Nissan’s LM P1 car in the FIA World Endurance Championship.
“I was thinking at the start of the year that it would be amazing to do both LM P1 and GP3 so I’m very happy and surprised that this has happened!” said Mardenborough. “The championships are relevant to each other, all racing is, but they do require different skills. GP3 is short sprints so the racing is very aggressive from lap one until the flag, whereas in LM P1 the races are between six and 24 hours long so the ability to quickly change strategy is required along with the obvious need for physical and mental endurance.”
“It’s great to go back to Carlin for GP3,” he continued. “I made my single-seater debut with them and they are a very professional outfit. I want to be a winner so I’m going to be using what I learnt last year to improve my performance and to challenge for podiums and lots of points.”
Team boss Trevor Carlin added: “Jann completes an extremely strong line-up for us. Having worked with him in F3 and seeing him continue to develop in GP3, I have no doubt that Jann will be a potential race winner from the start. It’s fantastic to see the path his career has taken; from a gamer at home to a competitive GP3 racer on track and we’re thankful to the GT Academy and Nissan for entrusting us with this next step in Jann’s single seater career. Our aim is to retain both the drivers’ and teams’ titles and with Jann, together with Antonio [Fuoco] and Mitch [Gilbert] I think we have a very capable team with which to attempt that. ”
If single-seaters and sports cars were not enough, Mardenborough has also been selected to make his debut in the Nurburgring 24 Hours this year, racing the Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3. In typical Mardenborough style he has already been over to Germany to have a go, albeit in a small hatchback car!
“I went to the Nurburgring 24 Hours as a spectator and I was sick with envy of the other drivers,” he said. “My first experience of the Nurburgring was very familiar as I did plenty of laps on Gran Turismo 6 before going out for real. I can say after one lap I was already pushing and kerb hopping! Me and Wolfie (Wolfgang Reip 2012 GT Academy winner) did eight laps nose-to-tail, flat-out, overtaking cars with three times the power that we had! The marshals must have thought we were crazy. There’s a section called ‘wippermann’ which is my favourite sequence of corners virtually, and doing it for real it’s my favourite sequence of corners on any track I’ve been round. It’s bliss. The track is dangerous and will hit you hard if you’re careless for a split second and that’s exactly what a racing circuit should be like!”
Jann is on track at Estoril for the next two days in the Carlin GP3 car. He will finally get his hands on the Nordschleife in a Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 in next week’s VLN 1 race.
Chilton Goes Group C
Factory Nissan Le Mans driver Max Chilton will take part in this weekend’s Goodwood 73rd Members’ Meeting and will get behind the wheel of one of the Japanese manufacturer’s most iconic sports racing cars on Saturday, 21 March.
Chilton raced in the Formula 1 World Championship with the Marussia team in 2013 and ’14, and rewrote a page in the sport’s long-standing record books by finishing each of his first 25 grands prix.
The Formula 3 and GP2 race winner has switched his attentions to the World Sportscar Championship this year, and will be one of Nissan’s factory drivers of the revolutionary GT-R LM NISMO at the Le Mans 24 Hours in June.
This weekend, however, he will drive a Nissan prototype of a very different kind, getting behind the wheel of Kent Abrahamsson’s R90CK, the very car driven to pole position by Mark Blundell for the 1990 Le Mans race, on the Saturday of this weekend’s event.
Chilton had intended to make his Goodwood race debut at the 2014 Revival, but was unable to do so after an engine failure on the Ford Mustang he had driven in practice prevented him from forming up on the grid for the Shelby Cup.
Having originally only intended to come as a spectator to Goodwood this weekend, he is delighted to have been invited to drive in the high-speed demonstration, which will be pace car-free this year.
The high-speed Group C demonstrations will take place on each of the two days of the 73rd Members’ Meeting, with Chillton’s Nissan joining an array of sensational 240mph rivals from Jaguar, Lancia, Mazda, Porsche, Aston Martin, Toyota and others.
Max Chilton said: “I was really excited about making my Goodwood race debut at the Revival last year in the Shelby Cup, so it was pretty unfortunate that I wasn’t able to race in the end due to an engine failure. I was just planning on going to spectate this weekend and catch up with a few old faces, but now I can’t wait to drive the Nissan R90CK thanks to Kent Abrahamsson’s kind offer.”
