At every race meeting the DSC Editor has a list of those he’d like to try to catch up with at some length and for several months the name of Jacques Nicolet has remained on that list.
Finally though I briefly tracked down the head of Onroak Automotive at Paul Ricard and there was plenty to talk about, plenty of clues of positive things to come and, as it turned out, some misconceptions to be overturned.
First things first Jacques, with the 2017 LMP2 chassis manufacturers now decided where do things stand for Ligier, there is a perception that your current market strength could be undermined by an already 2017 compliant chassis from Oreca?
“Actually I disagree. Oreca have clearly built a very good car and it is very tough to beat out there at the moment but there is another factor too, the strength of the driver line-ups they have in the cars at the moment.
“Beyond that though there is actually an opportunity for Onroak here. By 2017 our car (the Ligier JS P2), will be three years old and will, in any case, need to be replaced for the new regulations.
“That gives us the opportunity to see where the rest of the competition is, and to make a bigger step forwards with a new car.”
There has been some talk of OAK Racing having to close as part of the fall-out from the new regulations (which means a manufacturer cannot run a factory team?
“We want to keep running the team and believe we can do so, there is a new project, all will become clear!”
(no amount of gentle prodding would persuade the smiling Mr Nicolet to elaborate!)
Onto LMP3. You seem to be selling rather a lot of Ligier JS P3s at present?
(Smiling broadly) “It’s going very well. We have a lot of teams that have already announced and a lot of interest from others for ELMS, VdeV and, of course, the new French Prototype Series which looks like being a big success in the next couple of years.”
So just how many cars are sold at the moment?
“Wait and see!”
That number is, according to even the information we have to this point, already into double figures.
GG
