#66 JMW Motorsport Ferrari F458 Italia: Rob Bell, James Walker
Daniel James Smith
TOUGH CALL AT HOME EVENT FOR WALKER
James Walker had to settle for ninth place in the Le Mans Series race at Silverstone this afternoon when an early race encounter with an Audi created a setback for the JMW Motorsport team. The result didn’t reflect the performance of the team this weekend with both James and his team mate Rob Bell fully on the pace of their top rivals throughout the race meeting.
Conditions were tricky at Silverstone this weekend with ‘four-seasons-in-day’ weather and red flags curtailing practice time. Despite the lack of running James reported that the car felt good and the team felt confident heading into Saturday’s qualifying session.
Unfortunately when Rob Bell was on his hot lap a spinning Corvette brought out the yellow flags and he had to back off and could only take ninth place on the grid.
“Rob started the race today and was going great until he was hit by Allan McNish in the Audi,” explained James. “The real blow though came almost an hour later. By that time I was in the car and we were really getting into the rhythm then we got a one minute stop-go penalty for the Audi incident! This put us a lap down and you just can’t recover from that in a Le Mans Series race.”
“It’s a shame as our pace was good today,” he continued. “Both of my runs were consistent and I think we deserved better. We have to take the positives from it though, namely the fact that the car ran faultlessly throughout the race. We’re looking forward to Estoril now. I know the track well from World Series and I think we will be quick there.”
The Estoril race, which is the Le Mans Series season finale, takes place in just two weeks’ time on 25 September.
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