Saturday Paddock Notes: Alpine’s First Pole & Their New Chassis
Alpine First Pole
Matthieu Vaxiviere’s overall pole position for the 2021 8 Hours of Portimao was the first for the driver, the Alpine marque, the first overall pole for Signatech and the first for a french-flagged team in the FIA WEC’s 68th event.
Alpine join Audi, Porsche, Toyota and Rebellion on the roster of WEC polesitters since the World Championship’s inception in 2012.
New Alpine Chassis
Signatech has taken delivery of a second, newly built, Alpine A480 for use at the Le Mans 24 Hours. Senior team sources confirmed to DSC today that there are no plans to expand the entry for a second car in 2021, but rather to ensure the best possible preparation for the Championship in general and Le Mans in particular.
The #28 and #38 LMP2 Orecas from Jota are both carrying tribute vinyls to the late Mansour Ojjeh who passed away last weekend.
The ‘Mao The Big Man pay tribute to Ojjeh, elder brother of long-time Sportscar and GT racer Karim.
Mansour was a long-time shareholder and co-owner of McLaren, one of the architects of the Group’s successes, and a close personal friend of Jota co-owner David Clark.
Jazeman Jaafar
2018 WEC LMP2 race winner with Jackie Chan DC Racing, Jazeman Jaafar is present at Jota this weekend as part of a collaboration encouraging Malaysian engineering talent by exposing young professionals to the top talent at the UK-based team both at race meetings and at their UK base.
Jaafar meanwhile, who last raced internationally in 2019 in GT World Challenge Asia, is not ready to give up a future programme yet… Watch this space!
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