United Autosports team principal Richard Dean and WRT founder Vincent Vosse criticised the 20-minute stop-and-hold penalty to be taken by six P2 teams in opening free practice for his weekend’s Le Mans 24 Hours round of the World Endurance Championship round.
Together with a third team boss, who asked not to be named, they argued that the penalty dished out to the Vector Sport, AF Corse, TF Sport/Racing Team Turkey, TDS Racing/Tower Motorsports, Duqueine Racing and Nielsen Racing teams should have been much sterner.
The six teams were all sanctioned for running the sensors on their ORECA-Gibson 07s during the Test Day, which “gives a sporting advantage to the competitor” according to the stewards’ bulletins confirming the penalties.
Dean and Vosse argue that the gain in running the front and rear sensors, which map the ride height of the car over the course of a lap, outweighed the loss of track time imposed by the stewards.
“The information they gained is massively valuable and is going to be of massive benefit through the rest of the week — it’s huge,” Dean told Autosport.
“Giving them a 20-minute hold in free practice is a weak penalty.
Vosse echoed Dean’s comments, adding: “It’s a big gain in terms of the data you collect.”
“Maybe if we had known the the penalty was only going to be a 20-minute stop-and-hold we would have run lasers.”
The three of the six teams approached by Autosport described the presence of the two ride-height lasers on their ORECAs in terms of an oversight or a mis-reading of the regulations, at the same time playing down the gains involved.
Vector team principal Gary Holland said: “It was an error on our side because we had been testing with the car at Aragon to get in some high-speed running and for some reason the sensors weren’t taken off the car.
Source: Autosport