Veloqx Prodrive Racing, the collaboration between Care Racing Development, Prodrive and Veloqx Motorsport, has been at the Paul Ricard Circuit in the South of France for three days of tyre testing with Michelin and carrying out a subsequent Le Mans simulation run.  

The car ran trouble free for over 27 hours before a gearbox failure prematurely brought the test to a halt.  The Prodrive built engine completed 4,800kms with no problems, and the gearbox had run for 5,400kms before it failed.

The team’s six drivers were present – Kelvin Burt, Anthony Davidson, Jamie Davies, Tomas Enge, Peter Kox and Darren Turner – and all took part in the testing over the three days.  Each driver carried out between 4/5 hours of the endurance run in one of the two Care Racing owned Ferrari 550 Maranello GTS cars due to be campaigned at the Le Sarthe in June. 

Day one (Monday, 14th) was used for the testing of some new tyres and compounds and the set up of the Prodrive Ferrari in preparation for the endurance run.   All parties were extremely satisfied with the Michelin products tested, and some of the compounds are expected to be used at Le Mans.

The endurance run – which took place in dry but windy conditions alongside a Bentley – began at 1230 hrs on day two (Tuesday, 15th) with the driving team of Burt, Davidson and Turner.   They handed over the car to Davies, Enge and Kox at about 0400 hrs on Wednesday, 16th. 

Veloqx Prodrive Racing team principal, George Howard-Chappell, commented after the test:  “We are all very encouraged to have run this long, although naturally disappointed about having to stop 30 minutes before we’d planned.  We go testing to expose weaknesses and we’d much rather find out about them now than at Le Mans and make sure they don’t happen again.  We will be working with Xtrac to solve the problem and expect to be in excellent shape for the official Le Mans test on 4th May.”