Audi Sport Team Joest’s Loic Duval has sounded a warning to Porsche that he and his teammates are more determined than ever to catch them for a chance of taking the 2016 FIA World Endurance championship titles.
Duval, who shares the No.8 Audi R18 LMP1 car with Lucas Di Grassi and Oliver Jarvis, believes that the new-look high-downforce spec Audi R18 can chase down the current 39 point deficit to Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb.
“Even though the gap is big we are going to really go for it until the last race,” said Duval at Nürburgring today. “It is a big gap but closing it to them (No.2 Porsche 919 Hybrid) is feasible for us. But we have to win races and we now can’t afford to just finish second consistently. It will be tough but this why motorsport is so nice because it is never done and over to the end.”
The Frenchman was happy with progress made on the current Audi R18 after the Le Mans weekend and thinks that it will be a much closer fight than the 2015 edition of the 6 Hours of Nürburgring.
“This morning the grip level was a struggle because the track was quite dirty but we got a nice feel on the high-speed corners with our new package. The three of us did good lap times and all close in the low 1m42s, so it is a reasonable start for us.
“The car felt consistent through the stint,” Duval continued. “The team back at the factory have done a fantastic job and we think we have a car that can give us a good result as we have a championship to chase now. I think it will be much closer than it was last year.”
