Sorensen: “Confidence Slowly Coming Back” After Imola Crash

Marco Sorensen said “the confidence is slowly coming back” following his sizeable crash in the FIA World Endurance Championship’s Imola Prologue after qualifying sixth in the best of the Aston Martin Valkyries at Spa.

Sorensen suffered a hefty impact with the barriers after a high-speed off at Tamburello when on an out lap on a cold Imola track.

The crash caused substantial damage to three corners of the No. 009 Valkyrie and resulted in a change of chassis between the Prologue and the Imola season-opener.

Sorensen was taken to the medical center for precautionary checks after the incident but escaped injury, although has admitted the crash did have an effect on his confidence particularly with the new Michelin Pilot Sport Endurance tires introduced for this year.

But he said “it was nice to get back to it now” by setting the sixth-fastest time in Spa qualifying, representing one of Aston’s best performances since the start of its Hypercar program last year, and was only 0.360 seconds adrift of pole.

“After Imola, the confidence was maybe not so high after my little crash in the Prologue,” he told Sportscar365.

“So I’ve just been building up the confidence and now slowly it’s coming back and I’m starting to feel the car a little bit again because, on the new tires, it’s a difficult thing.”

Despite the Imola Prologue setback and the Valkyries only finishing ninth and 14th in the race, Sorensen believes the manufacturer has taken a substantial step forward for its sophomore WEC season.

“I think Imola, for that probably being one of our worst tracks to go on, I actually think we showed a decent pace there so I was quite confident that, when we arrived to Spa, that we’ll be more in the mix compared to other tracks,” he said.

“I’m quite hopeful for the rest of the season as well.

“We’ve worked hard over the winter. Most would probably say Imola looked really bad because we got a very bad result but, if you looked at the pace, we were closer than the previous year when we were very far off obviously.

“This year we’ve definitely moved closer and I’m quite sure even the other tracks we’re going to have a good step.”

Sorensen was “quite pleased” to start sixth at Spa after only squeaking into the Hyperpole shootout after an improvement in the final moments of the first part of qualifying.

“I was a little bit under some pressure at one point because they said I was in, we were P4 and then suddenly they came on the radio that the guys who went on the medium improved a lot and you’re now P12,” he added.

“I was like, ‘What? How can that be?’ Then I managed to pull one out of the hat on the last lap but only gained a tenth but that tenth put me from 12th to eighth.

“So it was amazing to get in and then suddenly it was a new challenge going from the soft tires to the medium tires.

“I think we actually did a good job transitioning to the mediums because we didn’t do much of quali practice on the medium tires so I’m quite happy with where we ended up if you look all round over the weekend.”