[06-05-2017]
PIERRE RAGUES BATTLES HARD IN TOUGH 6 HOURS OF SPA
 Pierre Ragues and the Signatech Alpine Matmut team finished in a fighting sixth position in LMP2 today after a gruelling 6 Hours of Spa, Pierre’s first World Endurance Championship (WEC) event of 2017.
The French endurance ace had shown encouraging pace in the build-up to Saturday afternoon’s epic six-hour race, as he joined Nelson Panciatici and André Negrão in the #35 Alpine A470.
Pierre enjoyed his first competitive race weekend action in Thursday’s two free practice sessions, completing a total of 58 laps of the 7.004km track. He added a further 24 laps in Friday morning’s final practice. Panciatici and Negrão were on qualifying duties and took third on the competitive LMP2 grid.
Race day started under sunny skies and Panciatici, on starting duties for the team, got off to a positive start. The team quickly asserted its intentions and became involved in a close scrap for fourth. Unfortunately just before the first hour, a coming together with an LMP2 competitor tipped him into a spin, losing over 30 seconds.
Pierre took over for his double stint 1h15 into the race, determined to fight back. Initial struggles with tyre management, which were also present during Panciatici’s stint, were found to be tyre pressure-related. The team was only able to identify the issue during Pierre’s run, so he had to battle through and carefully manage the tyres.
With 3h23 to go, Pierre pitted to hand over to Negrão. A rare error for the Frenchman saw him press the wrong button at pit entry, which stalled his engine and cost about 45 seconds. Aside from that oversight, Pierre performed strongly during his time in the A470.
Further compounding the team’s troubled day, they also suffered an issue with its air jack during the pit stops, which meant that the car had to be manually jacked up to change tyres. This issue lost valuable time during each round of tyre changes.
A number of Full Course Yellow periods affected the remainder of the race with light rain also falling on the Spa circuit. Tricky conditions made for an exciting conclusion to the race with Panciatici pushing hard in his final stint to claim a hard-fought sixth place.
Pierre said: “Our first WEC event of the 2017 season could not have been more incident-filled or dramatic. In spite of everything, we have to take the comfort in knowing we have a strong technical package in our Alpine A470. We know we have the pace in the car to fight with the best in LMP2 and I was pleased with my performance today considering the issues we faced. It just wasn’t meant to be. Early in the race, we faced issues with tyre management, which we initially put down to tyre degradation in the higher temperatures. The problem continued on my runs, particularly on the second stint, and together with the team we identified it was a struggle with the tyre pressures, causing oversteer. I couldn’t push, as I wanted to, because I knew I had to manage the tyres until the end of my second stint. The pressures were adjusted for the remainder of the race, and we could see later on that we were actually able to triple stint.
“I would like to apologise to the team for the mistake made at the end of my double stint when I pushed the engine kill switch instead of the pit limiter. I knew instantly what I had done, but there was no quick recovery. A mistake on my part and an incredibly frustrating one. Making matters worse, we were also experiencing issues with the air jack during the pit stops. The team had to manually jack the car in the air to change tyres, which was time-consuming.
“We pushed hard, we never gave up and we have sixth place to show for a lot of effort today. It’s not what we wanted but we achieved a race finish, which gives us plenty of data and lots to learn for Le Mans. The team performed exceptionally today, in difficult circumstances, so we have to find the positives from this weekend and prepare diligently for the big race – Le Mans 24 Hours. Finally, I would like to thank my Signatech Alpine Matmut team-mates Nelson and Andre for a great collaboration and their big effort today. ”
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