United Autosports chairman Zak Brown believes the pace differential between the Daytona Prototype internationals and LMP2 cars at the 12 Hours of Sebring prevented the latter from competing for victory.
The United-run Ligier JSP217-Gibson finished fifth, over one minute down, at round two of the IMSA Sportscar Championship.
After the race, the McLaren CEO suggested his team's car – which was driven by Paul di Resta, Phil Hanson and Alex Brundle – and the other LMP2 runners were pound-for-pound weaker than the DPi efforts from Nissan, Cadillac, Mazda and Acura.
This year's event was won by the ESM Nissan DPi of Pipo Derani, Johannes van Overbeek and Nicolas Lapierre.
The Nissan is based on the same Onroak Automotive-built chassis as the Ligier, but with a different engine and specifically developed bodywork as allowed by the IMSA DPi regulations.
"I’m extremely proud of our team’s performance," said Brown, "But it’s abundantly clear that the LMP2 class cars are in another category [compared to DPi]."
"LMP2 cars cannot currently compete on development and subsequent pace."
"We are racing with the hope the DPi cars are unreliable. We didn’t have the speed to race them [DPi] here.”
The United Ligier qualified last of the Prototypes, but recovered through the field during the race after its mechanics performed an engine change prior to the start.
It finished second of the LMP2 contingent, 14 seconds behind the ORECA 07 run by CORE Autosport.
Behind the winning Nissan DPi, second and third place went to the #10 and #31 Cadillacs from Wayne Taylor Racing and Action Express/Whelen.
Brown's dissatisfaction at performance levels was echoed by United managing director Richard Dean, who said that he was "very disappointed" with the way the prototype class was balanced.
The top 21 fastest drivers of the race were driving Daytona Prototype internationals, while the quickest LMP2 lap (set by Patricio O'Ward in the Performance Tech ORECA) was a second off the best time set by Oliver Jarvis in a Mazda.
"To finish fifth and on the lead lap on the team’s Sebring debut is incredible especially considering the handicap that we are having to cope with concerning the pace of the DPi cars," said Dean.
"All three drivers drove fantastically well: Phil was magnificent in his maiden Sebring race which was only his eighth race in an LMP2, Paul was also having his first race at Sebring, but looks like a seasoned endurance driver, while Alex ‘subbed’ superbly for the teamand the team [in place of Bruno Senna]."
"I’m proud of everyone in the team but very, very disappointed in the DPi-LMP2 discrepancies in terms of performance.”
Di Resta, who was competing in his second endurance race after making his debut with United at the Daytona 24 Hours, said it was "a decent result taking into account that currently it is totally impossible to race against the DPi cars."
"The Balance of Performance is an embarrassing waste of time – IMSA must get it sorted if they want teams from Europe to head here," he added.
Before Sebring, IMSA issued a series of Balance of Performance changes to the DPi cars, including a weight increase for Cadillac, turbo boost reductions for Acura and Nissan, and a fuel tank increase for Mazda.
No changes were made to the LMP2 field after round one at Daytona, where the CORE and United entries finished third and fourth respectively.
United Autosports is set to contest the two remaining rounds of the North American Endurance Cup, which makes up part of the IMSA calendar, at Watkins Glen in July and Road Atlanta in October.
Discussion about this post