Larbre Competition Narrowly Misses Podium In Mexico

French Corvette Racing squad Larbre Competition was in line to take its fifth podium of 2016 in Saturday’s FIA WEC 6 Hours of Mexico before the team’s No. 50 Corvette C7.R suffered damage in an accident with an LMP2 car.

Mexico marked the first race that Corvette Racing’s Ricky Taylor drove with Larbre after it was announced in August he would join the team for three events. To compliment Ricky’s participation in the race Chevy also sent along Charlie Ping – a race engineer who usually works with typically works with the American Corvette Racing arm.

Taylor and co-drivers Pierre Ragues and Yutaka Yamagishi started the weekend off strong, qualifying fourth in GTE Am. When racing got underway Taylor almost immediately fell back to sixth in order to avoid a spinning car ahead of him. The American then slowly worked his way through the GTE Am field and was running second when he pitted to hand driving duties over to Yamagishi.

Yamagishi was able to keep the No. 50 C7.R in podium contention until he was spun by the No. 78 GTE Am Porsche 911. More bad luck plagued the Japanese driver when he was later hit by an LMP2 car and broke the Corvette’s steering rod. He was then called back into the pits and handed driving duties over to Ragues, who drove a solid stint before handing it back over to Yamagishi.

With 40 minutes to go, Yamagishi slid on a wet curb on slick tires and hit the wall, ending the No. 50 team’s day just a few laps from the finish. It wasn’t the podium result the team deserved, however they were happy with the pace they showed Saturday and are hoping to be equally as competitive at Circuit of the Americas later this month and Fuji.

“I really enjoyed being back with Larbre in Mexico,” Taylor said post-race. “The result was notwhat the team was hoping for but we showed potential for a strong result. With mecoming back into the team as well as our new race engineer getting on­board, we can now continue to build on our performance when we move onto COTA and Fuji.”

Click here for full results from the 6 Hours of Mexico.