Team LNT Ginetta won’t be racing at the FIA World Endurance Championship round at Circuit Of The Americas, which will be run in two weeks’ time.
The British LMP1 team has sent out the press release:
“The WEC calendar is challenging, especially for any team with a new car in its first season and we have not had the chassis’ back at the factory since before Silverstone in August.
The cancellation of the earlier WEC race in Brazil and the new race at COTA made it impossible to do the planned work at our facility in Virginia, so the cars were shipped post-race back to Ginetta UK, the cars hopefully arrive at the factory today.”
Photo: JJ Media
It does sound a bit strange, that they haven’t been able to service the cars since the FIA WEC round in Bahrain on 14 December, with the COTA race being run on 22 February. Of course, it takes time to sail the cars back from Bahrain – but what if the race in Brazil had gone on like scheduled?
There are still three and a half weeks between the COTA race in February and the Sebring race in March. So it should still have been possible to go via Virginia between those two races, to get them serviced.
The two Ginetta cars have been very rapid over one lap, and usually during the first laps of the race too. Then something happens, and they lose more and more pace, and then end up in the garage for repairs – or just losing a lot of laps due to pace compared to Rebellion Racing and Toyota Gazoo Racing.
The Ginetta G60-LT-P1 car with AER engine has had a problematic start to its LMP1 life. The car was first on track in April 2018, with the Manor team doing the running. A sponsor got into troubles, so that programme quickly folded. Team LNT started running them for the 2019/20 season. Team LNT is owned by Lawrence Tomlinson – and he owns the Ginetta brand too.
The team is still present on the 1000 Miles of Sebring entry list, so they will hopefully have their repairs done well ahead of that race.
