James Calado told a packed 24 Hours of Le Mans post race press conference that he was “properly on the limit” in the morning when the #51 Ferrari 499P driver was battling with Brendon Hartley in the #8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid.
“Yeah, well, I think Brendan will tell you also — we were properly on the limit,” said the Brit.
“There was nothing spared there. We were pushing sd hard as we could and that time, both cars were very, very similar in terms of pace,” he added.
Calado had a hard fought bought with Kiwi, and two-times Le Mans winner Brendon Hartley, in the morning hours of the 24 hour race, where the gap came down at one point to just 1.5 seconds to the leading cars, after more than 19 hours of racing.
“I think we are quite surprised we made it to the end, because that was our biggest fear,” he continued.
“I’ve got to say the team did an amazing job, also strategy wise. It’s only our fourth race with this car. So it’s an amazing achievement. Whatever happened, I was proud of the guys, these two didn’t amazing job as well. So thankful to Ferrari and yeah, it was a great race.”
Asked in a Q&A session after the press conference about when Hartley was catching him, Calado told media he realised he had to risk it or risk losing the lead.
“The gap was coming down to Brendon and I thought, okay this is it,” he said.
“I just need to risk a little bit more and push as much as I can. He was gaining a lot in the slow zone areas. I don’t know how but he did, because I was properly on the limit.
“I don’t think we could have gone any quicker to be honest with you. That was pretty much all we had. They put pressure on us to whole time and it made a good show. So yeah, they’re very very strong.”
Speaking to MotorspoirtWeek.com after the press conference, Calado expanded on the pace similarities and differences with Toyota.
“i think it’s very close in terms of pace, it’s especially when Brendan was buying me. It was very, very equal. At times they were faster in the warmer conditions and at times, we were quicker in the cooler conditions. So yeah, it was very equal,” said the Brit.
Calado’s teammate Antonio Giovinazzi was then asked where Ferrari found the pace they had at Le Mans compared to the other rounds.
Ii think we showed in the previous races that we had fast car,” said the Italian.
“We put the car on pole in Sebring,” he continued. “And in Spa for a few minutes. But maybe we miss a little bit of experience from Toyota, especially on tyre degradation and everything.
“Maybe Le Mans was not the worst track for tyre degradation, and this helps us to be more fast and and put more together. We were worried just about a long distance, 24 hours, reliability and everything. But we were lucky and we put all together,” concluded the Italian.
Calado agreed with his teammate’s assessment. “Our car is definitely still hard on tyres. But Le Mans is a track with very low energy, which goes through these tires. So we were able to use, the soft, the medium, without any big deg issues.
“Here, it was still not easy. I mean to do triple stinting, for us was really on the limit,” he concluded.
