Thomas Laurent says that Signatech Alpine can look back positively on the Bapco 8 Hours of Bahrain, saying it was the team's best race of the season thus far.
Laurent, Pierre Ragues and Andre Negrao piloted the #36 Alpine A470-Gibson to a fifth place finish, one lap down on class winners United Autosports.
"The 8 Hours of Bahrain was gruelling between the heat and humidity, but we can draw some positives," said Laurent. It was probably our best race of the season, although our position on the grid and our fewer tyres explain the final result."
"I think we were among the three fastest crews on track as our times have shown. The team did an excellent job with the pit stops and set-ups, but we know that we need to work on qualifying to make things easier. The engineers were able to gather a lot of data to prepare for Austin, where Alpine won last time out. The goal will thus be to repeat this result."
Despite the fifth place, the team will gather more points as fourth placed G-Drive Racing was a one-off entry, which means they will not receive points for the race.
Laurent's team-mate Andre Negrao says the team's race pace is solid, but that the French outfit has to work on its qualifying pace.
"It wasn’t a difficult weekend, but once again we had to work hard to have a good car for qualifying. We have to fix this, because our race pace was quite solid," Negrao said. "I got a good start and finished my first double-stint with the lead.
Pierre struggled a little more, but we managed to settle into fifth place and it is worth fourth place points as the G-Drive is ineligible to score. It is a rather positive result, but we need to do better in Austin, and even more so in qualifying."
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