Lapierre stands down from COOL Racing Oreca
COOL Racing driver/manager Nico Lapierre will not race this weekend in Abu Dhabi. Instead, Alexandre Coigny and Malthe Jakobsen will run as a two-driver crew aboard the #37 COOL Racing Oreca.
COOL Racing enter the weekend 23 points out of the championship lead, and DSC understands that with the team now a longshot to win the LMP2 championship, Lapierre has voluntarily stepped down from his driving role in order to afford more seat time to Jakobsen – who can drive for up to three hours per race (Coigny, the team’s bronze driver, must complete one hour of driving at minimum).
…which goes fastest in Thursday afternoon testing
After that decision was made, Jakobsen put the #37 COOL Racing Oreca atop the timesheets in Thursday’s first of two 90-minute private tests furnished by local team Dragon Racing. His best lap time was a 1’43.107.
Fastest in LMP3 was the #8 Graff Racing Ligier JS P320 (Fabrice Rossello/Xavier Lloveras/François Heriau) with a 1’50.309, and the #10 GetSpeed Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Raffaele Marciello/Fabian Schiller/Florian Scholze) led a Mercedes 1-2-3 on top of the GT class with a 1’53.327.
Confirmed on site and spotted in a few meetings is at least one familiar face – Benjamin Franassovici, the Championship Manager of GT World Challenge Asia.
United Autosports’ #23 leads the evening test, but McGuire crashes
In the evening test session, the #22 United Autosports Oreca (Philip Hanson/Paul di Resta/Jim McGuire) recorded the fastest time in LMP2 – setting a best time of 1’43.320.
However, their session came to an abrupt end after McGuire left the track at turn three with half an hour remaining. McGuire was uninjured, and the car is understood to have suffered little significant damage.
COOL Racing’s #17 Ligier (Cedric Ottramare/Adrien Chila/Marcos Siebert) led LMP3 on a 1’49.006, and the #10 GetSpeed Mercedes led GT for a second time, posting a 1’52.950.
