While all attention focused on the broken Audi sitting
forlornly in the gravel at Woodcote inside the first hour of the season opening
6 Hours of Silverstone, few took notice as gearbox issues accounted for Andrea Belicchi's no.
13 Rebellion Racing Lola. But despite the inauspicious end to
their last outing with the venerable Lola before the new ORECA-built Rebellion
R-One breaks cover this weekend at Spa, there was much that the team, in
particular young chargers Dominik Kraihamer and Fabio Leimer, could take away
from the weekend.
Although they didn’t get
to drive in the race, the duo certainly make their mark in qualifying, and were
all smiles after beating team-mates Nick Heidfeld, Nicolas Prost and Mathias
Beche - who went on to finish fourth in the race - to pole position in the non-hybrid LMP1-L class.
“It’s important to put a little bit of pressure on them,”
said Kraihamer. “I think everybody was expecting them to be ahead of us; I’ve
been told that we’ll need a lot of time in the car, maybe a year or so to get
used to it, but it’s working out well so far on our car.”
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| A promising qualifying didn't materialise into a result on raceday for the Rebellion no. 13 crew. (Credit: FIA WEC) |
For Leimer in in particular, this small intra-team victory came
as a significant boost. After four years in GP2, the Swiss finally took the crown
last year after a ding-dong battle with fellow sportscar convert Sam Bird which
went down to the wire at Abu Dhabi, but with spaces in Formula One at a
premium, has now found himself following in the footsteps of Neel Jani, who used
Rebellion as a springboard into a factory drive at Porsche.
With significantly more track time than can be
found on the Grand Prix support package, as well as the experience of developing
a brand new car and the presence of a known quantity like Heidfeld - a veteran
of 183 Grand Prix starts no less - as a benchmark to prove himself against, Leimer
has kept himself in the limelight and importantly avoided the fate of his predecessor
Davide Valsecchi, who lost all career momentum with a frustrating season on the
sidelines at Lotus.
“It’s absolutely the worst thing for a driver to have one or
two years doing nothing, so for me it was important that I could continue to
race,” Leimer said. “LMP1 is very quick and nice to drive; it’s got a lot of
downforce, so it’s not like I’m going from a GP2 to a really slow car. For me it’s
a nice position to be in.
“I’ve tested a [BMW] DTM car, but this is my first time
doing a race weekend in a car with a roof on it. Everything for me was really
strange at the beginning, I have traction control and lots of new things like
that, but the driving style is nearly the same. Up till now everything’s been
working really well.”
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| Kraihamer and Leimer debrief after practice at Silverstone. (Credit Rebellion Racing) |
Although the R-One will likely face the usual new car teething
troubles that the manufacturer teams painstakingly ironed out over months of
winter testing, Leimer is grateful to have had the chance at the pre-season
test at Paul Ricard and Silverstone to adapt to sportscars with a proven mount,
free from worries about new parts breaking.
“So far it’s been quite okay because we don’t have many
problems with the car, so that meant I could stay out and learn,” Leimer says. “We’ll be in the new car from Spa and for sure
we’ll have some problems because we won’t have had as many kilometres as all
the other guys, but up till now in the single-seaters where the car stayed from
the beginning to the end I wasn’t changing much, so I’m open to learning, to
have a new challenge.”
Unlike his team-mate, Kraihamer is familiar with
developmental work after toiling with the Lotus T128 all the way through 2013.
The Austrian is a few months younger than Leimer, but has more experience of
endurance racing, having raced prototypes – and competed at Le Mans – since
2011, although Kraihamer too is new to the Rebellion setup, his fourth team in
as many seasons after previous stints at Boutsen-Ginion and Oak Racing.
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| Rebellion have high hopes for their new R-One, which is set for its debut at Spa. (Credit: Rebellion Racing) |
“It’s a new team, it’s a new car, it’s really strange to be
honest!” says Kraihamer. “I’m very happy to be driving with Fabio and Andrea as
well; he has a lot of experience in the team and he knows everybody, so if you
hang onto him, he’ll help you a lot.
“Last year with the Lotus we started with nothing and in the
end it was not bad. We’ve been through a lot of problems there, so whenever
problems occur here I can help the team out a bit and try to do my best. For us
drivers it’s important to develop the car, but to do that first we need to
drive it and get used to a different handling and things again. For example we’re sat quite low in [the
Lola], the view is through the bottom right of the windscreen, so there’s not
much to see, but from what I’ve heard the new car should be better.
“It’s a whole process which will take a bit of time and there
will be some moments where we won’t be that happy, but that’s normal. I’m
really looking forward to the challenge.”
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