Van der Linde: ASP “Exploring the Limits” of Lexus Package

Kelvin van der Linde has learned to “adapt his expectations” racing in the FIA World Endurance Championship as he admits Akkodis ASP Team is “exploring the limits of what the hardware is capable of” with the oldest car in the LMGT3 field.

At seven years old, the Lexus RC F GT3 that van der Linde shares with Arnold Robin and Clemens Schmid is by some margin the elder statesman of the LMGT3 category, especially compared to new-for-2024 cars like the Ford Mustang GT3, updated Aston Martin Vantage GT3 and Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R.

As team principal Jerome Policand previously outlined to Sportscar365, modifications were made to the package at the start of the season to prepare the Lexus for WEC, most notably focusing on aerodynamic changes and electronic updates.

Despite that, the pair of RC F GT3s have only been occasional points scorers so far this season, although they most notably both finished in the top ten in class in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Van der Linde notes that while the French squad has put in considerable effort towards moving up the order, the team’s advances throughout the season has been limited by the age of the Lexus.

“There’s progress, but with such an old car there the scope of what is possible to achieve is obviously not as big as when you have a new car to develop,” van der Linde told Sportscar365.

“A lot of the hardware and stuff like that is pretty old now and you get to the point now where you’re exploring the limits of what the hardware is capable of doing.

“You have cool ideas, you have certain things that you want to implement but it’s just physically not possible with that the homologation of car.

“The ideas are there, the execution is difficult because like I said there’s just at some point you get to on the level of technology we’re able to use it’s not really compatible with a car we have at the moment.”

Van der Linde explained that the limitations extend to “marginal gains,” also in situations where the car simply shows its age compared to its rivals.

“We still come in and out of the pits with a foot clutch,” he said.

“I’m manually clutching the car to get away. Sometimes you stall because you don’t get it right.

“When the tires are warm you need to be very specific with your pullaway and these are obviously issues you don’t have [on newer cars]. Like I don’t have it on the Audi [in DTM], the Ferrari doesn’t have it.

“They’ve all got a certain launch control function built in and these are small gains where we’re not even talking about BoP, we’re not talking about anything.

“It’s just literally one second every time we do a pitstop and that adds up over the race.”

As a result, van der Linde admits he has had to ‘adjust expectations’ for his first season in the world championship, approaching the weekend with a different mentality compared to other series he competes in.

“If you come with a package which you know is capable of winning, you have a different mindset for the weekend,” he said.

“The mindset here is more maximizing the package, trying to minimize mistakes and hoping that we can capitalize on the mistakes of others.

“But to really go out and say, ‘Listen this weekend we’re going to go win or this weekend we’re going to go onto the podium,’ it’s not realistic. So I think we need to adjust our expectations.”