Estre Searching for Answers After Early Qualifying Exit

Photo: Drew Gibson/Porsche

Porsche Penske Motorsport’s Kevin Estre admitted he was “starting to get frustrated” after his early qualifying exit for the FIA World Endurance Championship round at Spa after both works Porsche 963s failed to reach Hyperpole for the second time this season.

Estre took the No. 6 car to 12th overall with stablemate Julien Andlauer one spot further behind, 1.895 and 1.971 seconds behind the polesitting No. 50 Ferrari 499P, respectively.

It marks the second time this season that both Porsche Penske cars were eliminated from the first stage of qualifying, following on from the Qatar 1812km season opener.

Estre reached Hyperpole at Imola last month, qualifying tenth.

The Frenchman’s run in Spa qualifying notably ended with bodywork damage on the No. 6 car as he ran slightly wide on the exit of Fagnes, tearing the right rear bodywork part.

“I was pushing like hell to get into Hyperpole and I dropped a wheel and our tail is quite fragile in some areas,” Estre explained.

“When I dropped the wheel, the gravel grabbed the tail and broke the tail.

“But anyway, the lap was not good enough. I’m starting to be really frustrated, I have to say. I don’t know, we don’t have the pace, especially in qualifying.

“Race pace this weekend so far from what we’ve seen, we look quite okay. Not like first place, but somewhere alright.

“But in qualifying we don’t have the pace this weekend and we don’t have the pace in the beginning of the year.

“It’s a bit of a worry to be honest because we don’t really understand from where it’s coming from that we don’t extract as much performance as some others do.

“Ferrari is on another planet. You can be not fully happy about yourself, which was my case now, but it’s three [to] four tenths which put us into Hyperpole, but then put us last or second last into Hyperpole like Imola.

“So, yeah. I don’t know. We have to analyze all that, but we definitely the others seems to have done a big step compared to last year. We didn’t in qualifying, although the car doesn’t feel too bad.”

Estre struck a slightly more optimistic figure regarding Porsche’s odds for Saturday’s six-hour race, remarking that the German stable is “closer” to the competition compared to the previous two WEC races in Qatar and Italy.

Imola saw the No. 6 crew’s strongest finish to date this season, as Estre, Laurens Vanthoor and Matt Campbell finished eighth.

Notably, Campbell is on IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship duties at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca this weekend, with Porsche drafting in reigning ABB FIA Formula E world champion Pascal Wehrlein to team up with Estre and Vanthoor instead.

“We saw the quali sim from the others this morning which were quite a lot faster than us yesterday, but we thought we would have been a bit closer to everyone in qualifying in the race,” he said.

“When you look at the longer runs from this morning, from yesterday, I think we are in the mix to be in the top five. Or it looks like we are there, let’s say.

“It’s hard to say because you never know what fuel the others have, what tires.

“We are somewhere there. Closer than Imola, I think, and closer than Qatar, that’s for sure.”