Neil Cunningham is back in Embassy Racing colours for 2007 as the ambitious British team tackles the Le Mans Series for the first time. In his first exclusive Crash.net column, the ever-popular Kiwi looks ahead to the opening race at Monza and talks about a ‘Radical’ change to the team’s programme.
Well guys, I’ve finally managed to persuade
Crash.net to let me have a column, and now I’ve got one I don’t really know where to start!! I guess talking about my plans for 2007 would make sense…
As you’ll all know, Embassy Racing sat out the 2006 season which meant I didn’t have a regular drive last year – so I did some races in different championships including British and
FIA GT and also took part in the Le Mans 24 Hours. The plan was always for the team to return in 2007, so this season Embassy Racing are back on track and I’m back with the team, but even though we haven’t even had our first race yet, it’s been a trying season so far.
Jonathan [France – team owner] wanted to go into prototypes and bought the Pilbeam for our first season in LMP2, but we’ve been having too many little problems with the car during testing. With that in mind, Jonathan felt that it wasn’t right to stick with the Pilbeam at this present time, so we’ve gone over to the Radical SR9 – the one that Martin Short and the Rollcentre team raced last year - for the coming season. It means that me and Warren [Hughes] go to Monza this weekend and go straight into the first test session and then qualifying without any time in the car. It’s going to be one hell of a climb for us.
