Egor Oruzdhev believes that the brake failure suffered by team-mate Ben Hanley stopped the #5 Team LNT crew from achieving a good result at last sunday's 6 Hours of Fuji.
Orudzhev, Hanley and Luca Ghiotto finished last in the LMP1 class after their #5 Ginetta G60-LT-P1 suffered a number of issues during the race, which left them 16 laps down on the winning Toyota of Brendon Hartley, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima.
Despite the troubles, SMP Racing-backed Orudzhev was able to see the positives from his second race with the upstart British outfit.
“I was very happy to be back behind the wheel of the LMP1 sport prototype, so thanks to SMP Racing and the Team LNT team for this opportunity,” Egor Orudzhev said. “Even though this is only the second round of the season, the progress of the car is noticeable. Maybe this is not so evident from the result in the final standings, but we have speed and the team is certainly competitive."
Orudzhev almost passed the #7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid driven by Kamui Kobayashi at the start of the racing, attempting to overtake the championship leader round the outside at the first corner, but was unable to pull the move off.
"My stint was generally good. I started the race, had a great start, and if not for the Toyota’s boost, then I could be second," the Russian continued. "I think that fans have questions for such races when overtaking requires only pushing a button.
The second part of my stint turned out to be difficult – we did not guess correctly with the tyre pressures. And when Luca took over from me, we, of course, took this into account and fixed it, so further our car had a good pace, especially when it started to rain."
Ben Hanley then suffered a spectacular brake failure at turn one, as he was seen shooting onto Fuji Speedway's runoff area in a cloud of black smoke.
But, unfortunately, all hopes of a good result disappeared when a brake disc exploded while Ben was driving," Orudzhev said. "In general, I think we showed good speed for a car with weight penalty of 36 kg. So, I hope that in the future the team will continue to improve.”
