FIA WEC – Ups and downs for Rebellion Racing at 6 hours of COTA

The FIA World Endurance Championship 6 Hours of COTA race started well for the #12 Rebellion R-One AER.  Mathias Beche, Nicolas Prost and Nick Heidfeld were strong leaders of the LMP1 Privateers and were eyeing a top 5 finish overall, but after four hours, with only two hours to go, their race changed for the worse. They had to pit to replace a failed spark plug which was causing a misfire and thus lost their top position. Shortly after having rejoined the race, a contact with a GT competitor sent the #12 car further down in the classification as the car needed to be pitted again to have new suspension fitted to the front right corner. After the 6 hours of racing, the #12 Rebellion R-One AER secured third place on the LMP1 Privateer podium. Rebellion Racing’s sister car, the R-One AER #13 showed good pace, but the race of Alexandre Imperatori, Daniel Abt and Domink Krahaimer was interupted by several stops for spark plug replacements. Despite losing a lot of time with these unscheduled stops, the #13 Rebellion R-One AER finished the race in second place of the LMP1 Privateers. With two Privateer podium finishes, both cars scored valuable points the championship. Once again both Rebellion R-One AER cars showed some of the highest top speeds during the race in front of most of the factory hybrid cars, they recorded the second and third fastest top speeds overall with 304.2 km/h for car #12 and 302.5 for car #13. The Swiss team and their engine partner AER are still on a learning curve with the engine. The good side is that previous problems experienced in Nurburgring did not happen again. The high ambient temperatures in CoTA really tested the engine. The main technical problem faced during the 6 Hours of COTA was the spark plug failures and AER have a plan for what to do. The next race for REBELLION Racing will be the 6 Hours of Fuji in Japan on the 12th of October.

Bart Hayden – REBELLION Racing Team Manager : “We went into the race at CoTA knowing that the high ambient temperatures would be a real test for the cars.  Car #12 got through the worst of the heat with no problems at all for the first four hours, but then unfortunately a plug failure necessitated an unscheduled stop.  The contact for car #12 with the GT car shortly after rejoining prevented us for challenging for a stronger finish.  With car #13, there were several unscheduled stops needed for spark pug issues, so we need to analyse that and get on top of it quickly.  We’ve moved the cars forward since the previous race, but we know that we still have work to do.”