Liz Halliday and her Del Bello Racing team are chasing a possible LMP2 podium after nine hours of the 2007 Le Mans 24 Hours.
Despite starting someway down the field, following the wet qualifying sessions, consistent driving from Halliday and her team mates Vitaly Petrov and Romain Iannetta have seen the French team’s Courage LC75 climb up the order to lie third in class after over a third of the world’s most famous motor race.
Halliday, the only female competitor in the field of 165 drivers, started the race, making a solid start, and then drove a strong double-stint, leaving the car fourth in LMP2. Problems for the class-leading Quifel ASM Team Lola elevated Liz’s team into the top three soon after Petrov took over the car.
“I’m not going to tempt fate at this stage, ” Halliday said “but we need to keep going as we are. There is no point pushing too hard whilst our rivals are dropping out. We just need to maintain a steady pace and keep taking care of the car. ”
Liz was due to double-stint at the start of the race, and whilst a rain storm and pit stop for wets prompted an early tactical driver change, she was satisfied with a job well done.
“The start went really well. I kept it clean and made up about six places from our grid position. It was fairly dry at first, although there were a few damp patches still out there, but when the rain came it made sense to make the change when we were forced to come in for wets. ”
The only drama so far during the race for the Del Bello team came during that early pit stop when Halliday had to be alert to avoid a nasty collision in the pit lane as a rival LMP2 car cut across her as she entered her pit box.
“I can only presume their crew chief waved him out too early” Halliday said. “Luckily I saw him out of the corner of my eye and hit the brakes. We made contact, but it was only very slight and thankfully we didn’t sustain any damage. ”
