In only its second outing in the WEC’s top Hypercar class with the Porsche 963, Proton proved competitive as the car shared by Jani and team-mates Harry Tincknell and Gianmaria Bruni ran in the top five just shy of the two-hour mark.
However, the team’s hard work was undone when Tincknell came in after his opening double stint to hand over to Bruni, as a problem occurred with the seat belts that forced Proton to take the car in the garage for more than five minutes.
As a result, the #99 machine lost seven laps to the leaders, and finally ended up classified ninth and eight laps behind the winning #7 Toyota GR010 HYBRID.
Post-race, Jani lamented a lost chance to beat the Ferraris, as Tincknell had been hassling the #51 499P started by James Calado before his doomed pitstop.
“A lot was possible,” Jani told Autosport. “When I got in the car I was just behind the [#6] Porsche and the two Toyotas, and I stayed behind them for the full stint.
“The belt came out of the buckle - where you tighten the belts, the part you pull to tighten it, it went through the buckle and came out.
“We couldn’t tighten the belts anymore, so we had to change the whole belt. It was a proper freak event. I’ve never seen anything like that.
“It’s a shame, because I’m sure we would have finished fourth. We were quicker than the Ferraris, we had them on pace.
“But if you consider the car was new this weekend, it’s exactly these things that can happen when you don’t test beforehand.
“We saw that we have the drivers, and we have the pace. Now we just need to sort out the details that are just logically not sorted yet with so little running time.”
Source: Autosport