New era begins for KCMG at Silverstone

Everything has changed but also much remains the same at KCMG in 2015. A completely new technical package for the friendly but fiercely competitive Hong Kong-entered team will be seen in competitive action for the first time this weekend at Silverstone.

While the team faces in the pit box remain familiar, there will be a new racer joining KCMG’s usual Brit-pack at Silverstone this weekend. Nick Tandy joins Matt Howson and Richard Bradley to form one of two all-British trios in LMP2 (the other being at Strakka Racing).

For Matt Howson Silverstone marks a whole new challenge in what is undoubtedly the strongest and most diverse grid of LMP2 cars in WEC history. Six different chassis will compete in the class at Silverstone - Ligier, ORECA, Strakka-Dome, Morgan, Alpine and HPD ARX.

“The potential is massive with our new ORECA 05,” says Howson. “The Prologue test was mainly about getting our new drivers Nick (Tandy) and Nico (Lapierre) – who will race at Spa and Le Mans - comfortable in the car and familiar with an LMP2 coupe. They gelled with the team perfectly, as you would expect with two experienced professionals. They were both very impressive and we will have a great squad in 2015.

“The car was in its final spec at Ricard and, although we had a few small reliability issues, on the whole it was very positive,” continued Howson. “We came away really pleased as we were comfortably quick and actually we were especially pleased with how ‘slippery’ the car was, despite us running a good level of downforce.”

Howson believes that the improved handling and aero package of the ORECA 05 could pay huge dividends over the course of a six-hour event: “The lack of tyre degradation on the ORECA 05 was impressive especially at somewhere like Circuit Paul Ricard where traditionally it is quite high. That was good but we would have liked to have done more laps on the new-spec Dunlop tyre before Silverstone too."

Attempting to evaluate the competition is notoriously difficult ahead of the first race but Howson thinks the French contingent will be strong from the word go.

“I expect the G-Drive guys to be right up there again,” he says. “They are a very slick outfit. The Signature Alpine will be quick too. On the whole it will be incredibly competitive this year. The level was high last year but we anticipate it will be much more intense this year, especially as there will be more traffic in both qualifying and the race. Overall though the key factor will again be how the different designs perform on tyres over stints.”

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