A bright smile and a sense of satisfaction told the story of a happy Nobuya Yamanaka after the double-header at the famous Le Mans Circuit in France this weekend (13-15 June 2019).
Lining up alongside 50 plus cars in the Road to Le Mans – support category to the Le Mans 24 hours race that Nobu hopes to take part in next year – the amateur Japanese racer performed beyond expectations with a pair of mistake free, 18th place finishes, alongside teammate James Littlejohn in a quality field of LMP3 and GT3 machinery.
With each driver qualifying separately for race one and two, as well as alternating the starts for each race, it left James starting from ninth in Thursday’s race and Nobu starting from P30 in the weekend’s second race on Saturday. The ultimate pace shown was a competitive, collective effort in both races to deliver strong results for the pairing in the top half of the field.
Limited practice time on the challenging circuit saw Nobu continue to develop his skills and experience of the track in the races. He improved his qualifying performance by over six-seconds a lap in the races for a 4.04 second quicker lap-time, that demonstrated the clear improvements that have been made with his racing in such a professional environment this year.
Having now had the initial Le Mans experience Nobu is even more keen to cement his place on the grid for the 2020 French Classic. “I really enjoyed my Le Mans experience,” said Nobu, “The races and the track were so intense, and I had little time to feel or express my emotions in the car, but I feel very satisfied with my Le Mans debut.”
“Now we can focus on finishing the remainder of the European Le Mans Series and look forward to moving up to the LMP2 class which I need to experience for the next steps in my journey.”
Nobu will next take part in the third round of the European Le Mans Series in Barcelona Spain on the 19-20 July.
Source. BAM Motorsports
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