It’s a confident Colin Kolles who showed up at the press conference of the FIA World Endurance Championship before the 6h of Portimao, the second round of the 2023 series and for Vanwall in LMH.
The debut at Sebring was by no means easy for the Vandervell 680 driven by Esteban Guerrieri, Jacques Villeneuve and Tom Dillmann in the Hypercar Class, but the difficulties were foreseen and what we worked on in this month that preceded the Portuguese round was served to organize the team well.
#4 Floyd Vanwall Racing Team – Vanwall Vandervell 680 – Tom Dillmann, Esteban Guerrieri, Jacques Villeneuve
Photo by: Paul Foster
“In my opinion it was a terrible weekend for us, which could have been much better, but obviously we were somewhat limited in testing and therefore the operational part did not work as it should have”, admits Kolles talking about the trip to Florida.
“There were too many human errors, which caused or led to a worse result than we could have achieved. We have been working to make some structural changes in terms of operations and to improve this aspect of the team.”
“We plan to do some testing in view of Le Mans, obviously because the car is now in Europe and we will do as much as possible. I think we have a very good basis for the car and we need to work on the set-up to improve its performance.”
“To do that though, performance and mistakes have to be kept to a minimum within the team. That’s the biggest focus or problem we had at Sebring, where the troubles were more of a human nature and not a mechanical one.” “.
#4 Floyd Vanwall Racing Team Vanwall Vandervell 680: Tom Dillmann, Esteban Guerrieri, Jacques Villeneuve
Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images
Regarding all this, Kolles then stopped to talk to Motorsport.com to explain in more detail what didn’t convince him in America and what points he wants to improve now that the series moves to Europe.
What are the changes you made after Sebring?
“Well, obviously procedural changes to make sure the right spec and parts are fitted to the car. Basically it’s about making sure there’s no human error and that there’s the correct, latest spec, on the car, because obviously there are things frozen but also things more or less related to reliability and on this we have continuous development that must be demonstrated with facts”.
What more could be done in Sebring without these hitches?
“To be realistic, seventh position would have been right and normal. But obviously Sebring was a totally new track for us; if you take Porsche as a comparison who did 40,000km of testing, we did 5,000 in total, they maybe even over 10,000 at Sebring. We obviously have the comparison, the data, the GPS data which I think is also open to the press and for everyone to see. I think we had good race pace, even when we managed to put in a clean lap, so there is a lot to work on procedures and operations and then the performance will improve”.
Is this inevitable as the team gains experience on the car?
“Yes, I feel we have a strong car for Le Mans. This is my personal feeling, but maybe I could be wrong. I think we won’t be so bad at Le Mans, if everything goes well.”
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