Risi Competizione Set To Battle at the 87th Annual 24 Hours of Le Mans

Le Mans, France (June 13, 2019) The No. 89 Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 GTE-Pro will begin the 87th Annual 24 Hours of Le Mans race from the 17th position after some electrical and logistical issues earlier in the week. Despite the setbacks, Luis Felipe “Pipo” Derani, Oliver Jarvis, and Jules Gounon remain focused and are ready for the challenge.

“Pipo” Derani, Driver for the No. 89 Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 LM GTE-Pro:

“I think it hasn’t been an easy weekend, but that’s part of our sport. Sometimes we try to understand things a little bit beyond what can be understood. We are working hard to make a better car for the race, but unfortunately the race weekend hasn’t been according to plan. It’s a 24-hour race and we’re going to work hard. It’s been a pleasure to work with Giuseppe and the whole team. They are very dedicated. It’s not ideal at the moment, but we still have 24 hours to go and we’ll give our best.”

Risi Competizione Race Engineer, Rick Mayer summed up the challenges going into Le Mans.

“Our Le Mans race week started on the Sunday Test when we missed four hours of eight hours available track time. The drivers had other obligations with other series and the make-up Driver Meeting was very late, unfortunately, and not very accommodating to the drivers that weren’t in WEC. Then we had an engine electrical issue that shut the car off. We lost a lot of time Sunday so we’re on the back foot a bit.

We have good drivers and they are very competent and capable drivers, but they are not as familiar with the car as say other Ferrari drivers are that are factory drivers. They all need laps in the car to get acclimated and we were shortened on laps on Sunday. Then we had some inclement weather on the long session on Wednesday. We tried to put some remnant of a session in on the qualifying session on Wednesday, but again we were still playing catch up from the Sunday and Wednesday.

Today we made a couple of changes and the car got better. We seemed to be a little happier with the car. Not that we were unhappy with the car and then we just tried to play catch up but never got there. We’ve had some equipment issues and other small issues that have just compounded. I don’t think we have a bad car; I think we have a good car. We just need to see what we can do before the race to fix some of these small things and get back on pace. I don’t think our qualifying position is indicative of our pace; it’s faster not slower.”

The 24-hour race starts at 15:00 local time on Saturday afternoon and is expected to run under partly sunny skies all weekend.

For race information about the 24 Hours of Le Mans, please visit lemans.org.

Please go to www.risicompetizione.comfor information on the Risi Competizione team and follow us on Facebook/RisiCompetizione, Twitter @RisiCompand Instagram @RisiComp.