United Autosports’ Job van Uitert says he is glad to see the #32 ORECA go through into Hyperpole after spending an hour in the pits in practice with a gearbox issue.
Van Uitert, Alex Brundle and Will Owen had limited track time in the first practice session at Le Mans after the team encountered a gearbox issue. The problem was fixed in time for the team to resume practice and was in qualifying, Brundle was one of the six drivers to qualify for Friday’s Hyperpole session.
Talking to MotorsportWeek.com, Van Uitert says he was happy to see the car make it into the top six after the troubled day of running.
“Honestly, until then, we did not really have a proper quali run,” the Dutchman said. “We saw Nyck [De Vries] and JOTA doing good jobs with their quali runs, and we know that they were going to be on the pace, same for Paul [di Resta], so it would have been tight, but in the end glad that Alex stuck a lap together after getting it deleted.”
Van Uitert went on to explain that the team has opted for Brundle to carry out all qualifying duties, while the less experienced Van Uitert focus on other aspects of the team’s preparations for the twice-around-the-clock enduro.
“Tomorrow Alex will do it again because he did the qualifying today. We decided before heading here, Alex is obviously more experienced than me.
“I’m going to focus on long runs, Alex is going to focus on quali runs so we’re not going to have a big showoff between us who is going to qualify, because in Le Mans, qualification is nice but it doesn’t really mean anything.”
“So I think we’re looking okay. The pace is there. We still need to figure out little things and start really working on long runs.
Today has been a bit of a processional day so you don’t really know where you are compared to the rest, but we will see, we will see. Especially on Saturday.”
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