JOTA’s Replacement Chassis
Sam Hignett has confirmed to DSC that the replacement chassis around which Hertz Team Jota rebuilt the #12 Porsche 963 after the car was shunted at Le Mans by Callum Ilott will stay in service with the team for the remainder of the current season.
The chassis was not brand new and had seen race usage in the hands of another team, presumed to be the factory team.
“To do another chassis change on flyaway would have been too difficult,” he said, “and the (previous) chassis has to be repaired yet. That’s in process at the moment, we need that repaired and then we can look at it.”
Brazilian Racing Royalty In The Paddock
Aside from the two home racers in the entry, Augusto Farfus and Nico Costa, the Interlagos paddock has welcomed a number of Brazilian racing notables:
Long-time WEC racer Andre Negrao was spotted yesterday together with Nelson Piquet Jr – fresh from racing last weekend in the ELMS at Imola. Rubens Barrichello, Emerson Fittipaldi and his nephew Christian are here too, as well as IndyCar race winner Felipe Giaffone and ex-F1 driver Tarso Marques.
Felipe Nasr is available for Porsche on WEC reserve driver duties too.
One driver, who is definitely not Brazilian, but still enjoying the weekend is Team WRT BMW LMGT3 racer Sean Gelael (above). He is, however, now known as ‘Seaninho’ apparently!
More Goodyear Tyres Available For LMGT3 Teams Here
After a request from Goodyear, for this weekend the LMGT3 teams have been granted an additional set of ‘Medium’ tyres for the race.
This means they will have 22 tyres at their disposal for Qualifying and the race, allowing each team to change their right-side tyres at each stop (as the right side receives the majority of the load).
The strategy options therefore come on the left. Will teams look to double or triple their F1 Eagle Super Sports throughout the race to save time on pit lane?
Originally, Interlagos was seen as a candidate for Goodyear to debut its red-sidewall ‘Medium Plus’ compound, due to the circuit’s aggressive nature. However, the ‘Medium’ (with yellow sidewalls) has exceeded expectations in its versatility and durability.
Goodyear is, however, on the verge of signing off the ‘Medium Plus’ regardless. That process is set to be completed later this summer after a planned test with multiple manufacturers the Andalucía Circuit. But it remains to be seen whether or not we will see it in the WEC or ELMS competition before the end of the year.
Drama At Malpensa
There have been travel woes galore en route to the Brazilian round of the FIA WEC for large chunks of the paddock. But none more dramatic than that suffered by the passengers (including Raffaelle Marciello and much of the AF Corse team) on LATAM’s flight from Milan’s Malpensa airport to Sao Paolo. Their Boeing 777 rotated too early and suffered a massive tail strike*.
CCTV shows LATAM Brasil 777-300 tail strike incident while departing Milan Malpensa Airport on Tuesday. The aircraft reportedly suffered significant damage and has been grounded since. pic.twitter.com/NXd44IAFjg
— Breaking Aviation News & Videos (@aviationbrk) July 11, 2024
Mercifully the flight was able to return to Milan after dumping fuel, the aircraft has though understandably reportedly suffered significant damage.
For those unfamiliar with such matters this was a not insignificant incident.
*The term for the rear/tail of an aircraft striking the ground.
Beyond this, there was trouble too for most of the Peugeot TotalEnergies driver squad when their connecting flight via London was canned.
A 24-hour+ delay resulted, and four of the squad looked tired and grumpy when DSC arrived in the Heathrow lounge on Wednesday evening. They’re all here safe and sound now though.
(DSC owes particular thanks to Paul di Resta who enabled one of our parties to access the lounge to see the Euros Semi-final before we left!)
Brazilian Classics On Display
In addition, there is a track parade of classic road and race cars and a fair number are already assembled by the fan zone.
There’s plenty of interest in the collection including several Brazilian-built cars, including:
A VW Beetle-engined Puma.
A VW Golf GTi (Mk1) based PAG Nick.
And finally, an Alpine A108 built under licence in Brazil by Willys Overland as the somewhat aptly named Willys Interlagos!
In addition, there is a car with actual Le Mans history amongst the collection too, a 1951 Porsche 356, though not the car that won its class on the brand’s debut at the race.
This model crashed in practice and did not take the start!
