Preparations for the first round of this year’s Intercontinental Le Mans Cup (ILMC) got underway properly for Pierre Ragues at the challenging Sebring International Raceway earlier this week.

The OAK Racing driver got his first taste of the track during a scheduled two-day test session on Monday and Tuesday that saw all of this year’s contenders prepare their cars ahead of this weekend’s 59th Twelve Hours of Sebring race.

Pierre, along with the OAK Racing team, worked on set-up of their LMP1 OAK-Pescarolo car as well as evaluating a number of Dunlop tyres ahead of the race weekend. The test was a perfect opportunity for Pierre to learn the various complexities of the track for his debut race at Sebring this weekend.

Pierre commented: “The test was really good fun. It allowed me to get a first experience of the track which is very demanding both in terms of its technical and physical challenge. Everything ran ok and I was pleased with the progress we made over the test. We accumulated good mileage with no real problems which allowed us to evaluate different tyre compounds with Dunlop and work on basic set-up for this track. We weren’t chasing laptimes but we were still able to set comfortable times, which is a good baseline for the weekend. On a separate note, I’d like to say that our thoughts are with everyone who has been and continues to be affected by the terrible events in Japan.”

Official practice for the 59th Twelve Hours of Sebring gets underway from Thursday with the race itself running from 10.30am-10.30pm local time on Saturday.