No. 78 Lexus to Start from Pits After Warmup Hit

Akkodis ASP Team has been left scrambling to get the No. 78 Lexus RC F GT3 ready for the start of the 24 Hours of Le Mans after it suffered damage in a collision with the No. 7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid during warmup.

Kelvin van der Linde suffered rear-end damage to his car after he was rear-ended by Toyota driver Nyck de Vries during the 15-minute session on Saturday afternoon.

Timur Boguslavskiy, who shares the car with Van der Linde and Arnold Robin, told Sportscar365 that the car will not be ready in time to join the grid for the traditional pre-race ceremonies and will instead start from the pit lane.

As Boguslavskiy points out, this adds an addition complication for the team, as article 11.2.1 of the event supplementary regulations states that a car starting from the pitlane will have two minutes added to the next pitstop.

“Damage, quite big I can say and we will not start from the grid,” Boguslavskiy said.

“If you are starting from the pit lane, on the next pit stop you should do two minutes stop and go penalty. If you are lapped here, it will be really bad.

“We will try to do it under safety car or something like this. The start will be rainy, so could be.”

While a Toyota spokesperson confirmed that the No. 7 car only suffered bodywork damage in the crash and was fixed in time to take to the grid for the traditional pre-race ceremonies, Boguslavskiy noted that the car was “totally not ready” to do the same.

“There is a big damage at the back. I mean there is a steel stuff, floor, splitter, back bumper.”

The No. 78 Lexus was originally set to start the race from 21st in the LMGT3 class. Its sister car, driven by Takeshi Kimura, Esteban Masson and Jack Hawksworth, starts tenth in class.