Hey Mexico... there's a dragon coming!
We’ve done it, the wait is almost over, the summer break only has a matter of hours left… ‘THANK GOODNESS’ we hear you cry!
With round 5 of the FIA World Endurance Championship knocking on the garage door, we managed to sneak in 5 minutes with Clearwater Racing’s Managing Director Arj Pillay Kulasegaram as they prepare to get the second half of their debut season underway.
You’ve gone into the summer break still leading the Championship. Did you think this was where you would be come the summer? Does that take the pressure off or do you feel it even more now?
This was most certainly not where we were expecting to be given that 2/3 of our driver lineup have no prior experience whatsoever of 80% of the circuits we're racing on this season in the WEC. That fact that we're leading the championship has increased the level of pressure on us to perform...fortunately we're used to that and we'd like to think that we thrive under pressure.
Having not run at these circuits before, what are your expectations for Mexico and COTA?
Yes, Mexico will be new for all 3 Drivers and Texas for Weng and Sawa. What we would like is a solid points finish to consolidate our championship lead. A couple of podiums certainly wouldn't go amiss.....
Although you cannot let your guard down, you must be looking forward to the last three rounds, tracks you and your drivers have a great knowledge of…
That's what we've been looking forward to the whole year! A chance to show what we can do on tracks we know as well as the other teams know the European and North American tracks!
How have you and the rest of the team been relaxing since Germany (we don’t count Matt Griffin in this sentence… we firmly believe that man races in his sleep!!!)? We see Weng has been partying and Sawa has spent time climbing Mount Fuji!
Well I don't think any of us has been really relaxing. Sawa has been busy driver coaching both in Japan and in Thailand. Weng in the meantime has been fishing and celebrating his 50th Birthday, but he's also been training extra hard at the gym to cope with the rigorous of high altitude racing in Mexico.
The team, in the meantime, has been busy preparing for the Blancpain GT Series Asia debut of our Sunseeker Singapore McLaren 570S GT4. And I am happy to report that it went excellently with a clean sweep of 2 Pole Positions and 2 Race Wins for the driver pairing of Weng and Le Mans rookie Richard Wee!
Have you given any thought to your 2018 season…? Well we have but our entire focus is dedicated to finishing the 2017 WEC season as best we can!
Round 5 of the 6 Hours of Mexico from the Autodromo Hermanos Rodrigues, Sun 3rd Sept, 6pm GMT.
