World famous motor sport champion Neel Jani receives offer to compete in FIA GT1 World Championship with Team Matech Concepts

Jani to make brief India trip

Neel Jani, world famous motor sport champion and driver of Indian origin, received an offer this week to drive for Team Matech Concepts participating in the FIA GT1 World Championship.  If accepted, Neel will be driving the team’s Ford GT along side former Renault F1 driver Romain Grosjean.

 Jani, who is a former A1GP World Champion and Toro Rosso F1 test driver, is currently completing his season in the Le Mans Series with Rebellion Racing alongside Nicolas Prost, son of former four-time F1 Champion Alain Prost, while continuing to participate in testing for Red Bull F1. 

“I was very happy to receive the offer from such a great team who has already been so successful in its young history,” said Jani of the offer.  “Obviously I will have a steep learning curve as I have never driven a GT car before, but I am very much looking forward to this new challenge in helping Matech achieve its aim to win the series championship.”

Just before competing in his first GT1 race in Spa, Belgium, Jani will complete a three-day tour of India.  He arrives in Bangalore on the 25^th of July and is expected to spend the majority of his time there, with a possible short trip to Hyderabad.

Neel confesses, “It has been some time since my last trip and I am really looking forward to coming back to India with my father. Unfortunately this trip has turned out much shorter than originally planned because of my recently signed contract. There’s some pending work – on both professional and personal fronts that I needed to sort out and then I was planning to give myself a few days off and travel around with my dad, whose coming along, but now I’ll have to rush off to Spa, so I’ve had to cut short the trip. But I’ve heard the weather in Bangalore is great now – so really looking forward to coming!”

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Neel Jani’s Spa diary

“There was some disappointment coming away from Spa with no points but I always like to look positively and the pace that we showed in the early stages of the race was encouraging. With Le Mans so close now, I suppose that we are fortunate to get any bad luck out of the way before the big one next month at the 24 hours.

“The start of the Spa 1000kms was actually very challenging, one of the most challenging things I have done in recent years because it is definitely not easy when it’s wet and you are on slicks. It was super tricky entering Eau Rouge but it was even worse in the middle of the corner and hard to keep the car straight.  On my first lap I was actually off the road in Eau Rouge, somehow I saved the car and then thought, ‘I’ll take it a little bit easier now’. We had a safety car because of a shunt at the top of Eau Rouge and on the re-start I actually had better pace than the Audis and caught them up. It was a nice feeling to fight with them and really attack, overtaking Allan McNish, which was a nice moment.  In the middle sector we were really quick because we had a good car, good grip and even though it was a bit damp, the Lola-Rebellion went really well in those conditions.

From then on I just tried to get through traffic and tried to stay together with Jean-Christophe. It was all good and then obviously the red flag came out (due to the power failure). I didn’t know exactly what was happening, so I stopped on the starting grid as everybody else did.  My engineer (Lola’s Adam Airey) told me what the problem was and I thought, ‘well that’s rather different, even for Spa!’ We then decided as soon as the race would restart that we would just come into the pits and do a change under safety car. 

So, Nico went out and a few laps later he was out of the race with a gearbox problem. I didn’t feel anything in the car, for me the gearbox was going well, so it must have happened really just as soon as he got in and it was a shame because I think we had good pace and we could have finished around 5^th or 6^th.

Earlier in the race I was right behind Jean Christophe when there was the incident with Panis in the ORECA car. It looked to me as if Jean-Christophe couldn’t do a lot to avoid Panis.  Basically it was a race incident because it was a little bit damp and every movement you do with the steering wheel at that speed on top of Eau Rouge on slick tyres means you can go off very easily. He couldn’t just move the car over, as he will have a huge shunt himself.  For sure he didn’t do it on purpose as I know him and he wouldn’t jeopardise himself or another driver like that.’

Before Le Mans I will fly next week to Indianapolis for the Indy 500 because I had a few talks this year with some Indy car teams and I am going to meet them again to talk about future possibilities. After Indy, I am flying directly to Austria where I have a training week before Le Mans. Nico (Prost) and I will train in Austria with my personal trainer, Helmut Fink, who used to be Nick Heidfeld’s trainer and dietician.

Nico and I will be joined by Marco Andretti for Le Mans and I am really looking forward to racing with him again. I think Marco will do okay and I guess the night driving will be pretty special for him as it is his first time at the track. He raced the Acura a few times and did the Ricard test so will at least have some knowledge of the Lola-Rebellion.

I look forward to telling you all about our Le Mans adventure where I hope we can build on the good pace that the Rebellion Lola has shown so far this season. For sure, Le Mans is going to be an epic and I believe that we can fight for a very good result in the world’s greatest motor race.

Bye for now

NEEL JANI’S RICARD RACE DIARY

Neel Jani is racing for the Rebellion Racing team in this years Le Mans Series and Le Mans 24 Hours. The 26 year old Swiss racer will team up with Nico Prost and Marco Andretti at La Sarthe in June.

Last weekend Neel was in action for the Rebellion Racing team at the season opening Paul Ricard 8 Hours race. Here he tells lola-group.com how his weekend fortunes faired.

“I think the positives we can take out of the Paul Ricard event are that we found some really good pace during the race, after the problem we had early on.  We did quite a few changes for the race on the set up and suddenly we were really confident in our Lola-Rebellion.  We were struggling a bit on Friday and Saturday with oversteer and then some understeer.  We never understood why we never felt the car like this in testing but we finally got back to the good set-up and again we were pretty quick as the race went on.”

“The build up to the Paul Ricard race was not easy for us but the team were terrific all weekend, very professional. We chose the Michelin tyre when it was zero to five degrees at the test last month and we thought these tyres might work when it was also a bit warmer, but it seemed like as soon as it went over 15 to 20 degrees that these tyre were just destroying our balance and that’s why we struggled on Friday and Saturday. Sunday was a lot cooler, the coolest day of all, and the cooler it got in the afternoon, towards the evening, the quicker we got.  The big shame was the problem we had in the first 40 minutes with the broken suspension and the puncture. This just destroyed our race and I’m sure cost us a podium finish.

“We are investigating what happened with the incident but it was a weird accident, because on the Lola-Rebellion there was nothing, no marks, because if I had contact at least a little scratch should have been on the Lola. I brought the car in and the team thought it was just a tyre and I obviously did too. They checked the suspension but all seemed to be ok, so I left the pits and then as soon as I accelerated, the car felt strange and then at the end of the pitlane it was super bad and I had to come back to the pits very slowly.

“The team did a brilliant job to get us back out in to the race once again and we had very good pace, especially since we could compare it to car #13 Lola-Rebellion that finished third. They had a great performance, which was brilliant for the team, but we were up there and a bit quicker than them early on and we could have fought for a podium definitely. We eventually finished 7^th in LMP1 so at least we got some points in what was a good recovery drive.

Oh yes, we also got a penalty for spinning the wheel leaving the pitlane! A three minute penalty! I didn’t even leave a black mark on the pit box; there was no black mark but they gave us three minutes for that. It was actually an F3 tyres mark from the support race but they still gave this massive penalty. Crazy decision!

“The Rebellion Racing team are now looking forward to Spa where I have had successes and wins in the past. I won in Formula Renault two-litre there in 2002 beating guys like Kubica, Hamilton and Klien. I know the track really well, so I’m confident and I think we also have a good car in high-speed corners with the Lola Rebellion LMP1 and we have a great team to make sure we get the optimum result. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you next time when I return from the great Spa-Francorchamps.