de Ferran Motorsports’ faced a day of fightbacks in the American Le Mans Series Generac 500 at Road America after early contact in the race damaged the team’s Acura ARX-01b.
Gil de Ferran was struck by a GT2-class Ford GT-R after 11 minutes, putting the Acura into the wall. The team lost several laps after replacing front and rear bodywork plus the rear wing - but incurred a penalty and had to make an additional stop. After 33 minutes, de Ferran suffered additional on track contact and had to make a further stop for repairs.
de Ferran Motorsports’ efforts were further hindered by another penalty from race officials. After one hour and 50 minutes, de Ferran handed over the car to Simon Pagenaud who completed the race - pushing on despite all the early set-backs to finish eight laps down.
The next outing for the Panasonic-sponsored team will be the Mobil 1 presents the Grand Prix of Mosport near Toronto in Canada on August 22-24.
GIL DE FERRAN
“The car was running well at the start but we hit traffic after six laps. While passing a GT2 car I got hit in the left rear, went off and hit and wall. There was quite a bit of damage but I managed to get the car back to the pits.
“We lost a lot of time while the guys replaced the front and rear body work, then I went back out and then got hit again. Our day was really hit hard by two penalties from race control which, frankly, I didn’t understand what they were for, but we lost more time sitting at the end of pit lane for minutes at a time.
“That really cost us any chance of a good result. We had a lost a couple of laps after the contact but that really sealed our fate which is a shame because the car was running very well.
“Despite the damage to the bodywork, the car was still very quick.”
SIMON PAGENAUD
“It is certainly a disappointing day but I suppose we learnt a lot during the race and the guys did a great job in repairing the car which stood up really well to the impact.
“Luck was not with us today, that’s just how things turned out and there was nothing really we could do about it. The car was still really strong despite the damage and the balance was really nice.
“It was important for us to finish to race and get a good result for “Jonesie” - all the boys were very keen to do well for him.”
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