Murphy Prototypes qualifies 8th in LMP2…

This weekend sees the 83rd 24hrs Le Mans, arguably the most famous race of them all, taking place and with 56 teams lining up for the 8.46 mile Circuit de la Sarthe plenty of action can be expected. News from the Murphy Prototypes camp, after 4 hour practice on Wednesday (10th June), qualifying took place late Thursday and ‘Murphy’s Men’ have qualified 8th in the highly competitive LMP2 category…

In the hot seat for the legendary race are former F1 driver Karun Chandhok, Mark Patterson & Nathanaël Berthon.

Karun Chandhok was out first in very wet conditions, Karun handed over to Mark Patterson who after putting in a few laps had a spin at the Porsche Curves. Substantial contact with the barriers meant the red flag went out and the teams team’s Nissan-powered Oreca 03R was returned to the pits on the back of a recovery truck, fortunately Mark was unharmed. This meant the team had 3 hours to get to work on repairing the car before the first of the three two hour qualifying sessions. After a huge effort the team had the car ready to take to the track with only 25 minutes of the initial qualifying session left and in the hands of Nathanaël Berthon a lap time was set that would enable the team to start at the right end of the field for the two, two hour qualifying sessions on Thursday night. After continued efforts by the team, Nathanaël set fourth-fastest LMP2 time after his 30 minute stint. Patterson was next out and was quickly back to grips with the car but unfortunately with 40 odd minutes remaining the session was abandoned following another competitors accident but by 9.30pm qualifying resumed and was ultimately extended by another 30 minutes.

In this final evening session all 3 drivers managed the required 5 laps in the dark to qualify – the end result was 8th in LMP2 and 20th overall.

As we all know anything can happen at Le Mans and it is not all about out-and-out speed, reliability and a fair degree of luck have their roles to play…

The race starts at 3:00pm (CEST- one-hour ahead of BST) on Saturday.