Michael Christensen and the rest of the Porsche team were prepared for the next two days at Paul Ricard, where the FIA WEC Prologue will be run.
All FIA World Endurance Championship teams will have to be there with at least one car for the test, and Porsche have brought both their GTE Pro cars. They have also entered the 30-hour test, so they have the chance to test during both night and day.
Racing24-7.net had a chance this afternoon to speed with the Danish driver and he feels ready for the new season.
“We have been testing a lot. There were a lot of things last year, that we couldn’t test, since we didn’t want to risk too much during the race weekends. So there was a lot of areas that we didn’t discover, but we have managed to do so over the winter, but there is probably still a lot to learn with the car.”
Porsche #92 with Michael Christensen and Kevin Estre had a numbers of technical issues, in a 2017 season just should be forgotten as soon as possible.
“It was already clear post Le Mans, that we couldn’t do anything in the Championship. So we push quite a bit harder than #91 (their sister car, editor) and that was a bit costly on the reliability. But we had nothing to lose. #91 on the other hand, managed to drive safe all season long and got points all the time.”
That was what made it possible for them to fight for the Championship all the way until the chequered flag, where they actually still had a chance to win the GTE Pro Championship, which eventually ended up going to AF Corse Ferrari #51.
Photo: JJ Media
“We had some technical issues in 2017. There are always two sides of the same case, but sometimes it was the mechanical things on the car, and other times it was us that made a driver error, like when I went off at Le Mans. But the luck wasn’t on our side, when a fuel line broke at Silverstone, so the car had a big fire, and later on in Shanghai, when the engine suddenly expired. But we feel well prepared for 2018, but it’s always hard to tell what the other teams have got. But I feel that 2017 was a very level playing field, so hopefully 2018 will be just like that.”
Michael has only managed to be behind the wheel of the car during the testing over the winter.
“I would have loved to race at Daytona and Sebring, but that wasn’t to be this year, so instead I’ve got some race laps under the belt in Pirelli World Challenge, even though the results haven’t been too good there. It’s always nice to driver a race car, and you can never get enough kilometres.”
The Porsche that Christensen raced in the Pirelli World Challenge is, however, the GT3 version, so it’s not quite like the GTE model. But it is a still Porsche.
Porsche and the 33 other cars at the Prologue will start their test tomorrow at 10.00, and the teams that have opted to run the 30-hour test, can drive until Saturday 16.00. The rest will have to take a break from Friday afternoon until Saturday morning.
