Catching up with Jann Mardenborough

It’s certainly been a rollercoaster year in the life of GT Academy graduate Jann Mardenborough. The Welshman suffered the abject disappointment of losing out on what had appeared to be a certain victory at Le Mans when a spark plug problem struck two hours from home, before taking the biggest win of his career in GP3 at Hockenheim, his first in single-seaters.

“This year has been one to show the development of what we’ve done since last year,” said Mardenborough. “Last year was really tough in F3 jumping into a single-seater for the first time, it was a massive learning curve, so it’s been nice get some results and see the improvement on last year.

Mardenborough celebrates victory at Hockenheim. (Credit: GP3 Media)

“Obviously Le Mans was unfortunate, but I know and a lot of people know that if we didn’t have that issue, then we would have won.  That’s a nice feeling to have, and GP3 is going well, in the last few rounds we’ve picked up a lot of points. Hopefully we’ll continue this form, keep on improving and see what we do next year.”

With Mardenborough’s backers Nissan announcing their entry to the World Endurance Championship next year in a fully-fledged LMP1 programme, it’s an exciting time for the 22-year-old, who was also added to the Red Bull roster in a development role over the winter.

“I get to use their simulator on a Tuesday, so before every race weekend I’m on the sim for three hours and then after that I’ll do physical training with them,” he said. “It’s great because I can go there with my engineer from Arden, prepare for race weekends, work on weaknesses and then if we’ve done our run plan we can help develop the sim as well, which is why they were interested in me in the first place. 

"It’s a win win for everyone really - the sim is a good tool to make your mistakes and try different things. The Pirelli tyres are very fickle, they have a very narrow operating window, especially in the race to get your head around that and to know what needs to be done at certain times is crucial. Silverstone was the icing on the cake for us, what we learned on the sim translated into real life which was really rewarding.

Mardenborough has found his time in Red Bull's simulator
enormously beneficial. (Credit: RedBull.com)

“It’s a personal goal of mine to reach the top of sportscars, so I’d love to be a part of a full factory LMP1 squad,” he added. “I’m not too sure what’s going to happen, whether I need another year of racing, but they’ve got my best interests at heart. Hopefully it will happen and I’ll certainly be pushing for that, but if not then there’s always the future.”

As for the present, Mardenborough finds himself back where it all began this weekend in the British GT championship at Brands Hatch, supporting team-mate Sir Chris Hoy. He’s hoping to avoid a repeat of the dramatic finish in 2012 that saw Jonny Adam’s Beechdean Aston Martin cross the line just 0.022 seconds behind in the series’ closest ever finish.

“It’s really nice to be back at the track where we got our first win in the championship with Alex Buncombe in 2012; there’s lots of familiar faces around the paddock, it’s great,” he said. “If we are in a similar sort of position again then I’d like for there to be a bigger gap – it wasn’t really enjoyable going across the line because I didn’t know if I’d won or not! We’re aiming for a podium and to try to get as many points for Chris as we can.”