The FIA WEC entry is gathering this morning at Silverstone with the teams setting up this morning ahead of Sunday’s third round of the 2018/19 ‘Super Season’.
Whilst Dragonspeed have run with the BR1 high-downforce kit (at Spa – until Pietro Fittipaldi’s Qualifying crash) the SMP Racing team have not yet run the kit at a race meeting.
That looks set to change this weekend and, if testing rumours are to be believed the pace should be impressive. Could Jenson Button go Alonso hunting? That possibility is raised a little after the recent Equivalence of Technology changes which should give the non-hybrid runners something around 1.2-2 seconds of pace at Silverstone compared to the Spa EoT.
Also running high downforce for the first time are Rebellion Racing on the R13s – already the pick of the non-hybrid LMP1 crop the Rebellions, building on substantial ORECA experience and data, could also show significant pace here.
The Factory Porsche’s are both back in their regular liveries after the hugely successful heritage schemes raced at Le Mans with an interesting vinyl on the rear of the #91.
Amongst a small group of WEC debutants here Nyck de Vries is the first to feature on the car he’s intending to drive, the Racing Team Nederland Dallara one of the first cars unloaded this morning.
The factory Aston Martins are both here too, and whilst many of the headlines elsewhere made play of the significant boost dealt out yesterday in the BoP change from Spa, rather fewer made it clear that the change since Le Mans has been rather less significant. They do look good though!!
One oddity is that the UK-based crews have arrived here as a flyaway, the cars and pit equipment will be shipped from Silverstone to Fuji so the teams are prepped here to containerise their kit on Sunday/ Monday.
DragonSpeed meanwhile unloaded, then reloaded, their ELMS ORECA 07 to take the #21 car to the National pits.
They, together with Gulf Racing, TDS Racing (G-Drive), Proton Competition and AF Corse/ Spirit of Race active in both paddocks this weekend with several drivers also on double duty including Henrik Hedman, Nico Lapierre, Ben Hanley, Gustavo Menezes, Matthieu Vaxiviere, Christian Ried, Matteo Cairoli, Giorgio and Gian Luca Roda.
