Stevens: Sixth Place at Spa “Just the Beginning” for JOTA

Will Stevens looked back positively on Hertz Team JOTA’s first race with its customer Porsche 963, describing the trouble-free run and sixth place finish in the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps as “a huge positive.”

Stevens, Yifei Ye and Antonio Felix da Costa completed 147 laps with the No. 38 Porsche in a race that included challenging damp conditions at the start.

The independent British team, which only received its new LMDh car from the factory eight days before the race, steered clear of any significant issues or on-track drama.

Stevens told Sportscar365 after the result that he was pleased to see JOTA get through the six hours, in what he described as a “pretty faultless” manner.

“We came here with a clear objective this week to do as many laps as we can,” he said.

“Obviously qualifying we had two, three laps to push a little bit more and then obviously in the race our main target was to get to the end, which we did.

“I don’t think we should lose focus of the fact that we rolled the car out of the pits two days [before the race].

“We can do a race honestly pretty faultlessly from a systems and a reliability point of view.

“I think as an achievement in itself for the team and the work that they’ve all put in is a massive credit to them.

“So that’s the biggest positive from the week. Obviously, the race is the first time we can drive consistently for longer.

“We’re trying a lot of things to learn what we can from a systems point of view and what we can change from a driving [point of view.]”

Da Costa started the race on wet tires, which eventually proved the wrong compound when the track started drying up and the runners on slicks rapidly gained pace.

“The strategy, we played it very safe at the start to obviously start on wet,” said Stevens.

“Even looking back, it was the wrong strategy call, but we would take the decision again because it just put us in a much safer position to take no risks.

“That was what we said before and we stuck to that and always took the safer option.

“So the strategy we ended up being on, we were going to have to splash for a lap or two at the end. In the last stint, we were fuel-saving a lot to try and get to the end.

“Obviously we were driving around pretty slow to achieve that, but it’s also part of the learning.

“Sometimes we have to fuel save a lot and there’s a lot of system checks we have to change to achieve certain energy mileage and short fueling and all this stuff.

“So we honestly got through a lot in the race. From an engineering point of view, obviously it’s new to them as well.

“So super proud of everyone. It’s just the beginning. The fact that we can get to the finish line is a huge positive.

“And then between now and Le Mans, we can work on some performance and then we see where we’re at.”

Stevens: JOTA Needs to “Unlock” Porsche Potential

Stevens concluded that JOTA was under no illusion that it still had plenty to extract from its car, but that it will start working towards that as Le Mans gets closer.

“From a setup point of view, we did nothing all week,” the British driver noted.

“So there’s so much more we can do to find performance and we have to take it easy.

“There’s no question we are aware of the challenge there is. I think there is obviously a step to match the LMDhs.

“We still learn the car. We have a lot of potential in it and that’s what we need to unlock.

“But for sure, at Le Mans, we’re not going there just to take part. We want to actually go there and race and win.”

Daniel Lloyd contributed to this report