There was major drama for the #99 JMR Corvette in private testing on Friday morning, with Jordan Love in trouble at T4. The car suffered light contact with the #6 ORECA, before Love lost control and made head-on contact with the barrier on the outside.
The subsequent damage has seen the car withdrawn from the race meeting, with damage to the front end that is not repairable here.
That has seen a major reshuffle in the driver squad for the #66 car with Bronze-ranked Prince Jefri joining his brother in the sister #66 car, Yasser Shahin is therefore out of a drive.
And there is yet another driver change to report: a last-minute switch for the Bronze driver in the #28 WRT BMW. Rinat Salikhov replaces Sergey Stolyarov as the nominated Bronze; Salikhov is a race winner in the Asian LMS last year at Sepang in a Winward AMG.
The change indicated yesterday for the #26 Bretton Racing Ligier saw Lenny Ried and Lorenzo Fluxa step away from the effort. He will be replaced 2024 Ligier European Series champions Hadyn Chance and Theo Micouris. Fluxa and Ried, though, will race this weekend, but in the local Radical series!
Another interesting name on the support race entry is Fu Songyang, the Chinese racer, who will campaign a Ferrari 296 GT3 prepared by AF Corse in the mixed Radical/Gulf Procar field. DSC readers with good memories may remember Fu Songyang as the owner of the now-defunct FFF Racing team.
A welcome encounter in the Yas Marina paddock confirmed that now ex-Iron Dame Rahal Frey has joined Team WRT as a driver coach.
And, with thanks to interested observer Richard Dean, DSC can row back from our description of the 1,2,3 from Algarve pro racing as the only ever time that a private team has swept the podium in international sportscar racing. United did the same in 2021 in the LMP3 class of the Asian LMS, GMB Motorsport did likewise a handful of seasons ago in the GT3 class of Le Mans Cup.
APR, though (for now at least), is the only private team to sweep an overall podium in ACO-rules international sports car racing.
