The Castrol Honda Team is working against the clock at Le Castellet in the attempt of assembling a new car for Gabriele Tarquini.
The Italian driver was forced to miss both races at Marrakech for the consequences of a dramatic crash occurred during the second free practice, when his Honda Civic was t-boned by Gianni Morbidelli’s Chevrolet RML Cruze.
The car’s chassis was bent beyond repair and within minutes of the damaged Civic being returned to the paddock, it was loaded into one of the team’s trucks and two members of the pit crew set off to drive through the night to Tanger for catching the first available ferry across to mainland Europe. Then they drove through Spain and into France, bound to the Paul Ricard Circuit.
From the other end of the Team logistics plan, a new prepared bodyshell was hurriedly being completed overnight in the JAS Motorsport race shop in Milan. Mechanics worked 24 hours on Sunday and Monday to get the shell into as advanced build as possible, before it too was loaded for transport to Le Castellet.
According to the plan, both the damaged car and the new shell arrived at the circuit this morning. An Italian GT team sportingly offered its workshop at Le Castellet to JAS Motorsport, for the assembly work that consists in removing all the systems and mechanics from the wrecked car and fitting them into the new shell.
The team has less than 72 hours to win this race, before Friday’s test session.