Albuquerque: United Has “Nothing to Lose” at Monza

Filipe Albuquerque reckons United Autosports’ No. 22 crew could take a more aggressive approach to the final three FIA World Endurance Championship rounds as they have “nothing to lose” following their Le Mans setback.

Albuquerque, Phil Hanson and Will Owen currently sit ninth in the LMP2 championship standings after Le Mans, 36 points down on the championship-leading No. 38 JOTA lineup that took a dominant class victory in the French endurance classic.

The first-corner collision with Team WRT that left Owen in the gravel on the opening lap of the race was the third time in a row that the 2019-20 LMP2 champions suffered some kind of misfortune this season.

“I don’t even keep track of it anymore, of the points,” Albuquerque told Sportscar365.

“We’ve been really unlucky and obviously my question as well is like ‘what is happening?’

“We started on front row twice and once in third. In Sebring, we were leading for four stints and then obviously, a bad race would be P3 or P4, because we were a minute ahead of some drivers that did finish ahead of us.

“So the red flag hit us at the point where it should not be hitting us, when we tried to triple stint because we had the advantage to do it.

“Then it was the red flag, the tires were completely cold, and we could not rewarm them again. Obviously, we lost a lot of time and we had to go off sync.

“So everything went bad, we finished seventh in Sebring. It was shocking with the pace that we had. I mean, our sister car won.”

In Spa, a podium challenge for the No. 22 Oreca 07 Gibson came undone when Hanson spun in the final hour while attempting to overtake one of the Toyota LMH cars.

“Spa, we were not winning, but definitely we could go for second and third in the team,” Albuquerque said.

“Their door locked and us, fighting with a Toyota there was a small mistake from Phil but again, it happens.

“You should never have been fighting with an LMH to start with.”

Albuquerque said that the No. 22 crew’s current position in the standings leaves it with “nothing to lose”  for the remaining races, hinting that it could opt for a more aggressive, race-by-race approach as the season heads into its final stages.

“Once again, we’ve been like on top of the sheets every session, but it’s just not been materializing for us,” he said.

“So now, I think we’re just going to be driving a bit more aggressive because we have nothing to lose. It’s as simple as that.

“We go for single events; we are nowhere in the championship. So Will and Phil for sure want to go out and show their speed, which they have, so let’s see how it goes.”

WRT “Have to Win Every Race” to Salvage Title Hopes

The events of Le Mans also impacted WRT’s championship campaign, with the Belgian squad’s No. 31 car retiring after a Sunday morning crash for Robin Frijns.

As the team reverts back to its two-car effort for the fourth round at Monza, it too has been put on the back foot with Frijns, Rene Rast and Sean Gelael fourth and the No. 41 crew of Rui Andrade, Ferdinand Habsburg and Norman Nato sixth in the standings.

Team boss Vincent Vosse indicated that WRT will need to maximize its result for the last few races to attempt to close the gap to points leaders JOTA, while also signaling that his team is trying to move on from the Le Mans incident.

“We have to win every race,” he told Sportscar365.

“We are not in a situation to be able to manage. We just have to go full-in, which is normally what we do anyway.

“We should not make too much of a story about Le Mans; it is something which happened unfortunately for us and for United, which was included in the incident at the start.

“I discussed with Richard [Dean, United Autosports co-owner] the week after Le Mans. We will discuss it in Monza again, probably.

“We are a good challenger for United and they are a good challenger for WRT.”

Daniel Lloyd contributed to this report