Signatech Alpine's Andre Negrao believes his team's level of preparation and the ability to stay out of trouble will play a key role in deciding the WEC championship battle in LMP2.
The Brazilian shares the #36 Alpine A470 with Nicolas Lapierre and Pierre Thiriet and holds a lead of four points over the #38 Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca of Ho-Pin Tung, Stephane Richelmi and Gabriel Aubry.
Talking to Motorsport Week, Negrao explained how important preparation has been for the French outfit.
"Everyone prepares himself," Negrao said. "Like me, I go to the gym. We prepare a lot of things on the car. We’ve had a lot of tests, and we did the race in Spa. But that race was so crazy that that doesn’t help us so much. That was kind of disappointing."
"But we prepare the car in the workshop and in the simulator, as well. The car is much more prepared for this race, because it’s so important for us. We have the championship and Le Mans. So now, we just have to see."
The 2018 LMP2 winner also explained that staying out of trouble in the early stages of the race will be an important factor in deciding the championship fight.
"You can’t decide the race in one corner in the beginning," Negrao continued. "If you lost two or three positions in the beginning, it’s not a big problem. You have to stay on track, stay out of trouble, especially during the night, because during the night people usually make mistakes."
"The most important thing is to stay calm in the beginning. Let the race get started, because in the beginning it’s a big fight between GTs, LMP2s, LMP1s, everything can happen."
"And when the race is heading for the end, you start thinking ‘where are our rivals’. And then you can decide what’s going on, because in the beginning, everybody is trying to just stay on the pace of the race."
