BMW’s Robin Frijns believes Cadillac are the team to beat at Le Mans this year, he told Motorsport Week.
“We are focusing on race pace throughout the whole week so far. It’s very difficult to piece it together because you don’t know what other teams are doing,” said the Dutch racer, in conversation with Motorsport Week.
“Sometimes we look half decent, sometimes we look struggling from the outside. You just don’t know what Cadillac and Toyota [are doing]. I think Cadillac is the team to look look at. I do think that they are the strongest package at the moment.
“Alpine is one of those teams that… the underdog I would say. We are in the mix somewhere up front, but what does that mean?”
All 3 Cadillacs qualified in the top 5 in yesterday’s qualifying, but it remains to be seen who is strong in the Hyperpole sessions later this evening. Frijns’ BMW teammate in the #15 BMW, Rene Rast, qualified the car fourth, just over 3 tenths off the pace from the leading #35 Alpine of Ferdinand Habsburg.
Frijns ‘doesn’t care’ about qualifying this weekend
“I think we had a strong qualifying,’ Frijns said.
“We were a bit surprised that we were really that up front, to be honest.
“But we are really focusing on long runs. We are not particularly focused on qualifying. I don’t particularly care where we’re qualifying, if it’s P3 or P13.
“I don’t care anymore because so far… we’re doing endurance racing. It’s always nice to start on pole, it’s an ego thing for me. But at the end of the day, the two podiums we have in WEC are both starting from out of the top 10.”
Other teams have told Motorsport Week similar things; that their focus is on race pace and long runs, and qualifying or Hyperpole isn’t a huge concern compared to the 24 hour race beginning on Saturday.
“Obviously, you want to start more upfront, because it tends to be safer at the start. But if you look at the actual starts, if something is happening, it’s always happening in the first two rows. So it’s a bit of a gamble.
I will do Hyperpole 2. Sheldon [van der Linde, Frijns’ other teammate in the #15 BMW] will do Hyperpole 1. If he makes it through in the top 10, if he doesn’t, I will not be sad about, it at all actually.
But yeah, if you’re in the car, you do your best. And if that’s good enough for P3, it’s happy days. If it’s good enough for P9, I don’t care either.”
Race pace ‘very close together’ among manufacturers
Looking again at the race, Frijns reiterated that he believes Cadillac are the team everyone’s looking at.
“We gotta mix with the Cadillacs to fight for the win, or we fight with the Alpines. for P5 or P6? I don’t know. I believe it’s going to be very close together.
“I hope it’s going to be very close together. I really do hope that the field is the top 10 or top 15 is all together within 30 seconds of the race for 24 hours long, because that’s what I would like to have.”
BMW have an updated car for Le Mans this year, having applied 2 jokers to the car to upgrade the aerodynamics of the font nose section, and the cooling package as well. Frijns believes the updates have succeeded in helping the car’s performance specifically at Le Mans, which the package overall was designed for.
“I do believe that the car is definitely in a better window. Especially in the long runs just, that’s what we focused on. But it also seems that the hotter it gets, the better the car is working.
So in Spa, we were really struggling in FP1 and FP2, and qualifying as well. And we don’t particularly understand why we were really struggling.
“Then on race day, 10 degrees hotter. And suddenly the thing is working. We don’t have answers to our questions from Spa, but at the end of the day, I don’t care because if it’s the same thing I’m happy.”
This is a good sign for BMW, as the race is forecast to be much warmer than the practice and qualifying sessions during the week, which has seen much cooler temperatures than usual for this time of year in the La Sarthe region of France. In comparison, the race is forecast to be in the high 20* Celsius on Saturday before droping considerably at night, before rising again for Sunday and race finish.
READ MORE: Alpine ‘more prepared’ for Le Mans than in previous years
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