On Sunday at 03:00 PM Moscow time two cars of the Russian SMP Racing team lined up on the start of the race held at the British Silverstone Circuit. Car number 37 driven by Kirill Ladygin, Viktor Shaitar, and Anton Ladygin had earned third starting position, while the car number 27 in the hands of Sergey Zlobin, Nicolas Minassian, and Maurizio Mediani was fourth on the starting grid.
Great performance demonstrated during the qualifying held on Saturday, which resulted in high grid positions, almost faded in the face of fuel-related technical problems which kicked a lot of vehicles out of the series with one sweep. Both SMP Racing prototypes had to drive into the pits several times due to one and the same technical failure which was caused by high concentration of ethanol in fuel. The cars were stalling on straight sections of the track and failed to start in the pits. The situation improved only after changing control programmes which took quite a lot of time. But the team was not going to give up and redoubled its efforts to continue the six-hour competition. However, in the course of the race car number 37 had to retire due to technical issues. Meanwhile, in spite of the rain, the second car was winning back up to 4 seconds on each lap demonstrating an incredible will to win coupled with competency. As a result, the crew climbed onto the third step of the podium in the LMP2 class.
After the race we were able to talk to one of its participants, SMP Racing Sport Director Sergey Zlobin: “The race was totally unpredictable. First, Minassian suffered an exploded tyre, then all those fuel problems started; Porsche was having them also. The system was not coping with the fuel supplied by the organisers. The pressure in the fuel pump was 1.5 atmospheres less than it should be throughout the entire race which means we were 15 km/h slower. Anton had never had any experience of driving a faulty race car so far and that’s why he did not spot the pressure jump in time. As a result, the engine just stalled. It’s really a pity that the second car had to retire due to technical reasons making us change the scheme, as initially, according to our tactics, number 37 is our main car, while the car number 27 supports it in test mode. There is no tragedy here, we wish all our pilots luck, the major story lies ahead and there is still a chance to fight for the world championship title. In spite of a whole bunch of technical issues, the results of the week-end are good. We’ve collected a lot of information both for ourselves, and for our tyre partner Michelin. Our car was third to cross the finish line in the WEC! Yes, there was some tricky trap with that fuel, we were not expecting it to happen. But a lot of teams faced this problem, not just us. Actually, those who were prepared for that, took the lead. It all seems quite strange but it doesn’t matter now. We’ll be able to deal with it now that we have this fuel. We’ve got everything we wanted to get from this race. Anyway, the team has scored points. We have already worked out a plan for the race in Spa together with Michelin, so I guess everything will be different there. Now we have all the information we had lacked. After all technical troubles, damp moisty weather worked in our favour and the SMP Racing car was 4 seconds faster than all the rest. It’s the result of five rainy days of tests and only one dry day when we changed to slicks. We just didn’t have enough time to get ready with the tyres for this race. We were able to test only medium and soft dry compounds so we can make the homologation update for hard compounds now. We can now make the sidewalls harder preparing the tyres for the race in Spa and, of course, for the Le Mans race which is now our major goal. Especially since the main homologation requirements are related to tyre compounds only and not to the tyre design, which we can change and which should allow us to go much faster. The race in Spa is so soon!”
