TINCKNELL IN FIA WORLD ENDURANCE CHAMPIONSHIP RACE AT SPA FOR SECOND CONSECUTIVE YEAR
Harry Tincknell will compete for JOTA Sport in the next round of the FIA World Endurance Championship (2 May). Nissan NISMO factory driver Tincknell joins Simon Dolan (GB) and Mitch Evans (NZ) in the Gibson 015S Nissan for the Six Hours of Spa Francorchamps Harry's second race of the year for the British team.
Tincknell has been able to accept JOTA's late call-up because his LM P1 NISMO race programme does not begin until Le Mans in June. Harry, who also competes for JOTA in the European Le Mans Series this year, plus Simon and Marc Gené, posted a fine second in class result in last year's corresponding Spa race Tincknell's WEC race debut.
The Spa race comes in between last weekend's ELMS 'opener' at Silverstone in which Tincknell, Dolan and Filipe Albuquerque finished second and the next ELMS race at Imola in Italy (17 May) a corresponding race 12 months ago the trio won. Albuquerque is unable to compete at Spa, and at Le Mans, for JOTA due to his Audi Sport factory commitments.
Harry meanwhile is currently testing the Nissan GT-R LM NISMO at the NCM Motorsports Park at Bowling Green in Kentucky until the end of this week. He flew to America on Sunday and commenced testing on Monday of the radical three-litre front-engined, front-wheel drive car which misses the first two WEC rounds.
Harry says: "I'm obviously delighted to be called up for Spa. I have good memories from Spa last year when I finished second [LM P2] in my first WEC race. I think the new Gibson update will suit Spa a lot more than the 2014 spec Zytek so hopefully we can be really competitive against a strong WEC field this season.
"Simon drove really well there last year considering it was two weeks after the big Silverstone accident and we'll prepare really well together for this year's race and hopefully go one better.
"It'll be Mitch's first endurance race and I met him for the first time at Silverstone last weekend. There is no doubt that he will be fast so I think we go there with a strong package as JOTA has worked very hard over the winter while their pit-stops last Saturday were supreme.
"Nissan testing has been going well. We managed some laps in the dry on the first morning but it has been mainly wet since then. We have had the car running smoothly and are still learning masses every day. We have learnt a lot about the Michelin 'wets', especially our bespoke designed rear tyre, so it has been very useful and we still have two days to go where we will continue to work on long stints to get the mileage on the car."
