Strakka Dome Delayed Until Le Mans

Photo: Dome

Strakka Racing will miss the opening two rounds of the FIA World Endurance Championship due to continued teething issues for its new Strakka-Dome S103 Nissan.

The new LMP2 car, a joint project between the Japanese constructor and the British-based outfit, gained limited running time during last week’s three-day test at Paul Ricard, which led to the team to delay the car’s debut until the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June.

“Everybody is hugely disappointed not to be out at Silverstone, particularly having seen a little of what the car is capable of,” said team principal Nick Leventis.

“It’s also the home track for all the drivers and Strakka Racing’s workshop is literally just around the corner, so debuting the car there would have been perfect. However, the simple fact is that the car is not yet ready to race and we need to do more testing.”

The team will instead focus on private testing in the lead up to its first public outing at the Le Mans Test Day on June 1.  Leventis will be joined by Danny Watts and Jonny Kane at the wheel of the closed-top LMP2 entry.

“2014 remains our development year ahead of potential customer programs so we want solve issues, not work around them. We would not be doing justice to all the hard work done by Dome and Strakka Racing if we raced the car at this stage in its development,” Leventis added.

“Strakka Racing won’t cut corners and will instead concentrate on testing not racing to unlock the speed we know the S103 is capable of. I would also like to apologize to Strakka Racing’s fans that won’t get to see the car at Silverstone but they know we are racers. We are doing this to ultimately be more competitive and to put us in a position to challenge later in the season and show what it can do.”

Strakka’s late withdrawal leaves a 29-car grid for this weekend’s season-opening Six Hours of Silverstone, including just six LMP2 cars.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John