WAYNE Boyd says everything is in place to achieve a season-best performance at Saturday morning’s second Road to Le Mans contest with Tony Wells.
The Nielsen Racing duo completed a curtailed first race around the iconic Circuit de la Sarthe in France on Thursday afternoon in sixth position – less than two-and-a-half seconds shy of the podium spots.
WTM by Rinaldi Racing took the chequered flag by 0.736 seconds from the second-placed Ligier JS P320 of Rinaldi Racing, with MRacing getting their hands on the final piece of LMP3 silverware in third.
An accident involving the number nine Graff Ligier of Louis Rossi on the run into Indianapolis left the safety barrier badly damaged and forced organisers to neutralise the competition.
That meant the result was declared final based on the previous lap order before the Safety Car came out, meaning third place became sixth for Boyd.
“Thursday was a really messy day to be honest – it was not great,” the Templepatrick driver told Irish News Sport.
“Qualifying was difficult with a red flag and then I was impeded by traffic on my flying lap which meant I lost some time, but starting eleventh out of the number of cars that are racing here was not too bad.
“Tony had a great start to the race before, again, the safety car came out and then, with pretty much the whole field, we decided to box for the driver switchover.
“After that, we didn’t manage to complete a single flying lap because of the red flag being brought out but thankfully everyone managed to walk away.”
He added: “It was mega to get up to P3 in class before the accident because the car was fast, so we felt that we could go and fight for the win – but P6 is still okay compared to where we started from.
“The big positive we can all take from the first race is the car itself, which is really, really good. I think the pace we showed on Thursday means we are on course to pick up a better result in Saturday’s race.”
Friday’s qualifying session to determine grid positions for Saturday’s race (9.35am) was just as stop-start as Thursday’s, with it having to be abandoned following two separate red flag incidents.
It meant stewards needing to use the times drivers set during Free Practice, meaning Wells starts fourth alongside High Class Racing’s Jens Reno Moller on the second row of the grid.