Datum: 06.07.2011 · Le Mans Series

6h of Imola end with first ILMC-podiumposition for CRS-Ferrari #62

After a frustrating Le Mans weekend the CRS-crew of Pierre Ehret, Shaun Lynn and Roger Willis took new blood for the ILMS-championship-fight in the GTE-Am-class at the 6hours of Imola. At the first ILMC-Race in Italy the new Ferrari-Chassis with the #62 archieved a 4th in class and a third rank in the ILMC-classification. This gave the trio further points for their championship-fight.

Before the race the team took delivery of a new F430 GTC chassis by Tuner Michelotto, after the old car was involved in several incidents on the Le Mans weekend. „The car worked as usual fine from the start but unfortunately that involved also the well known understeering of our car.“ reported Ehret. „Further on it was decided to give Roger and Shaun some extra-time on the track during the practice sessions which resulted for me in having only done 7 laps before the start of the race. At least this paid of well for Roger who also took dutys for qualifying.“ Willis qualified the car on 7.th in GTE-Am and 45.th overall.

„Unfortunately we started the race on too hard tires which resulted in heavy understeering. We worked on this during the race and improved the handling a lot. So we were able to gain positions and to improve up to 5th position in our class. This was a clean race and thanks to all parties on the track we never had a caution period or worse accidents which was not to be expected regarding the heavy traffic with 48 starters.“

The 5th in GTE-Am developped to a 4th rank and a 33rd overall after the second placed Porsche of Long/Roda was excluded after the race because Long exceeded his allowed tracktime by 15 minutes. Due to the fact that the class winners Narac/Armindo were not scoring for the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, Ehret and his colleagues scored the points for third in class and the first ILMC-podiumposition in this season. They are now fifth in class with 18 points after 4 of 7 races.