The serious business of racing began in April at Silverstone in the UK for Round 1 of FIA WEC 2015.  Fast and flowing with several high speed corners and complexes, I don't know many drivers that don't love it. Compared to some of the modern, stale car park circuits around the world Silverstone is old school, and where protoypes like the Oreca 05 were born to race. In qualifying Maggots-Becketts is taken flat in 6th gear at 160mph and sees us exceed 3 lateral G. Boys sort of grow up, but never grow out of toys. They just get bigger and more dangerous...with minimal testing we didn't really have the car sorted for these long, sweeping corners and mixed conditions in testing slowed progress. Nick Tandy and I qualified the car in 3rd behind both G-Drive Ligiers which were working well, so a mega team effort in the car's qualifying debut. Nick is fast as f''k and also one of the best racers I've ever seen, so I knew we'd be getting everything out of what we had on Sunday. He's also an avid Nascar fan but we won't hold that against him.


Nick drove a blinding first lap to lead and held the Ligiers at bay for much of the first stint, before dropping back with what turned out to be a damaged radiator reducing performance. New cars are an unknown in terms of reliability, and despite otherwise running perfectly the radiator would need changing and dropped us well out of contention. We gathered good data in the race ending 5th at the finish, an eventual 4th after a post-race disqualification ahead of us. The highlight of the race for me was the fierce Fassler-Jani Audi-Porsche LMP1 battle coming past, I had the best seat in the house for a lap as I watched them scraping door handles. F''k I love my job...other than that, even when you're not in the race for the win it's business as usual and you just focus on going as fast as your car and tyres will allow. You never know what can happen in a six hour race.


We got a decent snapshot of what 2015 will likely be all about. G-Drive vs. KCMG...Ligier vs. Oreca...we were fierce rivals in 2014 and it really is the best motivation to have them there. The Ligier is 8 months ahead in development (LMP2 is cost-capped so develpment is minimal and mostly setup refinement), but that just means we must work and fight harder to bridge the gap. G-Drive are flawless in pit-stops and strategy, and with two top driver line-ups I think both sides relish the challenge. Like the LMP1 Audi and Porsche fight at Silverstone (shame Toyota weren't among it) it's what we all go racing for. And what the fans watch for. Sam Bird in the leading 26 G-Drive and I go way back in Formula BMW UK as we battled for the 2005 championship, and I hope we go wheel to wheel again this season, I'll enjoy it every bit as much now as I did then. Sam has since been a top level single-seater racer, GP2 winner and F1 tester, and in Endurance racing has been so far formidable. In that Orange Ligier, there's no better benchmark. So whilst we're seeing an immense fight in LMP1, don't forget LMP2 has all the ingredients for an epic fight all year long.


As if Silverstone wasn't mega enough for us drivers Round 2 took place at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. It's pretty well common knowledge it's one of the best circuits in the world, 4.3 miles long and barely changed since the old 14 mile circuit closed. Eau Rouge-Radillion is totally unique, flat out in 6th gear at 170mph in a prototype and totally blind, with a steep climb and bizarre compression G that takes some getting used to. It rains randomly at Spa almost inevitably, making Eau Rouge much more of a challenge along with the rest of the circuit. Nico Lapierre joined us for his first race at KCMG and brought all his LMP1 experience along with undoubted speed. The weekend started badly when Kazuki Nakajima sustained fractured vertebrae after being hit by Oliver Jarvis in the spray at Bus Stop chicane. It is a fact in heavy rain visibility is non-existent especially as prototypes create huge rooster tails of spray from their underfloors. It's not pleasant at all, pure blind driving and just one of the unavoidable downsides of high performance racing. Driving in the wet is actually awesome and I love it, the FIA has since introduced brighter rain lights and all we can do is minimise the risk. On a positive note the cars involved kept the drivers largely protected, so this shows the designers and crash tests are doing their job.


Mixed conditions again made us feel we just couldn't get ahead with this car, never having two session back to back to evaluate changes. However our engineer Greg worked magic and we were able to make huge strides in a one hour session to set the second fastest time, eventually qualifying a close second to the 26 G-Drive and proving how much the Oreca 05 was catching up. Sadly we incurred a 30 second start penalty from the pits after a scrutineering infringement, leaving us once again to battle for whatever may be left after six hours of racing. No safety cars to help us and an issue with tail lights costing us two minutes made it complicated, but myself, Nico and Richard fought back to finish 10 seconds off the podium. Shit just got serious. We're fast and we know it, all we need is a little luck. Our main rivals suffered an engine failure but they'll bounce back and we head to Le Mans just 1 point behind them in 3rd in the championship. The other G-drive Ligier of Derani-Yacoman-Gonzalez lead and they too make for a strong line-up and a tough season. Richard and I are learning fast having Nico around so we're becoming stronger than ever before, and with two strong team performances in the pits and blitzing through mid-race repairs, KCMG can arrive at Le Mans as one of the teams to beat.


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