With another top-10 finish in last weekend’s fourth round of the season at Monza, Italy, Tatiana maintains her streak of top-10 finishes in each of her LMP2 starts so far.
The Colombian driver and her Richard Mille Racing teammates Beitske Visser and Sophia Floersch made use of the momentum from a strong debut showing in the Le Mans 24 Hours in their first regular ELMS race together racing as a trio.
But despite some strong pace showed by all three drivers during the four-hour race, which started in damp conditions, a badly timed full course caution early in the second hour of the race compromised their strategy, restricting the #50 Oreca 07 crew to 10th at the finish.
Floersch took the start this time, making rapid early progress on intermediate tyres, and was up to high as fifth place before an early first stop to change to slick tyres.
Unfortunately, this put the team on the path to losing ground at the next round of stops, as Floersch made her second stop shortly before the end of the first hour and just two laps before the FCY period, when many of the team’s opponents were able to save time by making their stops while the cars out on track were restricted to just 80km/h.
Another full course yellow followed in the middle of the second hour prompted Floersch to pit and hand over to Visser, while Tatiana this time was entrusted with bringing home the #50 Oreca to the finish, taking the wheel for the final one hour and 35 minutes.
With no new tyres left for her triple-stint, Tatiana put in a valiant effort to cross the line in 11th place on the road, which became 10th when the DragonSpeed car that had finished in third place was disqualified post-race for a technical infraction.
It means Tatiana maintains her streak of top-10 finishes in each of her LMP2 starts so far.
Tatiana Calderón: “I think we definitely deserved a better result than 10th place. We had really good rhythm and we were unfortunate with the timing of the full course yellow, which came two laps after our stop. We started on intermediates and had to come in for slicks after eight laps, which compromised the strategy and the result. But I still think we are improving every race, getting to know each other with the team with the communication. We were a bit unlucky this time, but this happens and racing and especially in endurance racing. Hopefully we can finish the season on a high in three weeks’ time at Portimao.”
Unfortunately, Tatiana will not be able to take part in this weekend’s Super Formula round at Sugo because of Japan’s 14-day quarantine requirement for foreign nationals, meaning that her next race is scheduled to be the ELMS season finale at Portimao on November 1.
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