Adderly Fong will start this weekend’s 82nd running of the Le Mans 24 Hours as part of the first ever all-Chinese driver line-up, along with team mates David Cheng and Ho-Pin Tung.
The 24 year old completed a successful programme with the Oak Racing Team Asia team and will start the event in 15th position in the highly competitive LMP2 class in the #33 Oak Racing Team Asia Ligier-HPD. Sam Smith caught up with him as he prepared for to make his debut at La Sarthe.
Adderly, how was your Thursday running at Le Mans?
“I completed about ten laps today. We tried to complete a long run in the afternoon session which was stopped early by a red flag. The car felt good – much improved from Wednesday as we made the set-up stiffer, making it a lot more agile with its direction change through the high speed sections.
“I completed the first five laps of the night session to qualifying with the mandatory amount and this also gave me five laps on the medium cold tyre – which is a slightly harder compound – which has more tyre wall flex, both front and rear. It didn’t change the balance of the car, but there was more movement meaning the steering wheel was noisier.
“When I wanted to push in the afternoon session the red flag came out because of the turn on incident which was a bit frustrating. When I wanted to go for it with a decent fuel level that was when it all stopped. I started to push more in the night session and I was near to Ho-Pin’s time but we’ve still got a bit more pace to find in the car as we’re experiencing low speed understeer.
“There were a few gremlins. The water bottle system was leaking which meant the ECU shorted out, and Ho-Pin had to crawl back on one of his laps so the team spent a reasonable amount of time fixing that problem
“There are good positives ahead of the race. The car’s in one piece, we haven’t had any mechanical problems, everything looks well-prepared for the race. We’re good on consistent race pace even if we weren’t able to unlock a single lap qualifying pace.
How much of a challenge is the traffic with so many cars on track?
“It’s pretty difficult out there. The speed differential between the classes isn’t massive, except for the LMP1 cars which are faster than anything else. This means that if you catch a GT in a corner you’re compromised on your braking as we can brake later with the greater downforce we have.
“With Le Mans being so high speed you don’t want to take too many risks. It can be quite aggressive out there – everyone’s trying to do their own thing. Some parts of the track aren’t as wide as they seem on TV. Taking an unnecessary risk can be quite costly as we’ve seen so far this weekend.
How different is it driving at night?
“It was still quite light when I ran so I’m looking forward to having some laps through the night. The headlights on the Ligier are quite good, with a wide spread and good range. Indianapolis is supposed to be quite dark, but everywhere else looks to be fine. There are a lot of spotlights around the track. I’ve driven at Sepang at night with no spotlights so I’m prepared for it to be very dark!
How do you prepare for the late stints in the race?
“Endurance racing – certainly for a 24 hour race – means you’re not pushing at 100% all of the time. You’re not on single lap pace the whole time so it’s easier to jump in the car and race at any time over the 24 hours in this condition. To prepare for a stint you’ll drink a bit of caffeine, maybe throw a ball around to get your motor-neurone connections working and up to speed. It’s just a case of ensuring you’re up and awake plenty of time before getting in the car.
“I am really looking forward to the race now. I feel we can get a very good result and do China and Asia proud.”
