The dexterity of some of the FIA World Endurance Championship drivers was put to the test at the Shanghai International Circuit this weekend.
But this time it has not been the drivers' stamina of triple stints or perfecting the ideal pit stop and driver change; they were forced to deal with spins of a different kind as they swapped the steering wheel for table tennis bats!
The unofficial 6 Hours of Shanghai table tennis championships proved popular and, as expected, the competitiveness escalated quickly!
Ferocious Ford contest sees British victory
It was when the Blue Oval met the Blue Table. A contest of mind and strategy. But this was not a battle on the track but rather on the ‘WEC blue’ table tennis court where Harry ‘The Hitman’ Tincknell and Andy ‘The Paddle-Beater’ Priaulx took on Olivier ‘The Power’ Pla and Stefan ‘Smash’ Mucke.
After an intense match, officiated by WEC Race Director Eduardo Freitas, that saw several engaging rallies, it was the No.67 Ford GT pairing of Tincknell and Priaulx which took the silverware.
“Andy was pretty good for an old man,” said Tincknell. “We are more used to regular tennis in the UK at Wimbledon but the fact that he is a bit smaller than me ensured we had a perfect team for this size of game.”
“I was fairly happy with my show business name of ‘paddle-beater,” said Priaulx while twirling his paddle bat enthusiastically. “Olivier and Stefan gave us a good game and Eduardo kept us in check. We’ll come back next season and defend our title and we may even wear even more garish headbands next time!”
The net closes on Signatech Alpine as RGR Sport take close victory
The opening matches on Thursday witnessed an epic LMP2 ‘pong off’ as rival LMP2 title contenders Signatech Alpine and RGR Sports locked horns. The French and Mexican teams have been close on the track during 2016 and it was no different on the mini-court as Filipe Albuquerque and Bruno Senna went head-to-head with Nicolas Lapierre, Gustavo Menezes and Stephane Richelmi.
In a match of high intensity it was RGR Sport who ran out winners by two sets to one in a thrilling encounter. Several remarkable rallies saw both sides test their agility to the maximum and despite Menezes insistence on calling for ‘Hawkeye’ on a few occasions the match was held in a good spirit!
“It was a good game, pretty close,” said RGR Sport driver Filipe Albuquerque. “Yes we had some private testing beforehand but we looked through the sporting regulations and noticed there was a loophole so we exploited that!”
