This years lead-up to Petit Le Mans has been an interesting one for NOMAD. While we originally planned to run one car, new members to the team helped us to add another car only for illness and availability to bring it back to one car with a completely different lineup.
All that meant that Ryan, Jason and new recruit Alex came into the race potentially less prepared than we'd like, but looking forward to their first race together.
Entered into split #6 with our #561 car, Alex prepared to qualify only to have connection issues just before the session started – going well already! Jason jumped in to qualify in 8th, which felt solid enough given the strength of the competition.
Alex had rejoined ready for the race and made the best of an interesting choice of starting tactics by the leader. The plan from the beginning was to get through these early stints clean and aim to go longer on tyres than others. A look at the tyres after a strong first stint from Alex showed that wasn't going to happen early on, so Jason got in to give it a go.
A couple of uneventful but consistent stints from Jason, as well as some differing strategies from others in the session, helped pull the #561 up into contention for podium positions. Ryan continued this trend during his stints, although the second one had to be called slightly short – again due to our car being less than kind to its tyres.
By the halfway point of the race the #561 was still very much in contention for a podium spot, with Alex back in the car and aiming to get a double done now that track temperatures had decreased. Unfortunately a momentary lapse of concentration down the hill towards turn 5, 7 laps into the second stint, put the car hard into the wall with well over an hour of repairs needed.
Although the disappointment around the team is high after this result, there are plenty of positives to take. This driver combination were not the fastest in terms of outright pace by a significant margin – we were one of the only cars not to have dipped into the 1:17s during the race by the point of our retirement – but the consistency and similarity in pace of our three drivers kept us in contention. The drivers also showed great awareness in traffic with some LMP2 drivers that were fairly eager to make moves into any and all corners. All of this with minimal preparation while we were focussed on IVRA qualification attempts mean that overall we can be positive, if not happy with our outing at Petit Le Mans 2022.
Full focus now turns to the first rounds of IVRA Endurance and GT Sprint on the final weekend of October. More information available on the events page.