2016 News

Tequila Patrón ESM Returns to Asia for Six Hours of Shanghai

Shanghai pre

SHANGHAI, China, (October 31, 2016) — This weekend the FIA World Endurance Championship visits China for the 6 Hours of Shanghai, the penultimate race of the 2016 calendar.

While the LMP2 class looks to continue to be competitive, Tequila Patrón ESM has previously shown strong performances at the Shanghai International Circuit.  In 2015, the team had a top three finish in sight when a gearbox issue forced the car to retire early.

As the end of the 2016 season nears, Tequila Patrón ESM has continued to find speed with each race. Last month at the Six Hours of Fuji, a problem with the No. 31 Ligier’s belts dropped the team back from sixth to eighth with four hours remaining. Consistently fast lap times and strategically placed pit stops brought the No. 31 Ligier of Ryan Dalziel, Pipo Derani and Chris Cumming back into the top five by the end of the race.

The first Free Practice session of the weekend will begin Friday November 4th at 10:00AM local time, 10:00PM Thursday, November 3rd U.S. Eastern. The race will begin Sunday, November 6th at 11:00AM local time. Fans in the United States can tune in to FOX Sports at 2:00AM Eastern, or watch the stream live in its entirety at live.fiawec.com.

Ryan Dalziel
With only two races left in Patrón ESM’s WEC season we will be pushing harder than ever to return to the podium. China is a huge market for Tequila Patrón so with lots of guests and fans in Shanghai there to cheer us on I’m sure we will have that extra support to get the job done. We had some small issues during Fuji but our race pace was really good. We need a flawless weekend for sure.

Pipo Derani
Going to Shanghai, we have good hopes of a strong car. We had a very good car in Fuji, but unfortunately a problem with the belts stopped us from having a better result. I’m sure we’ll have a very good car. Without any mistakes, we should be able to go back to the podium, and that will be the main goal. It’ll be a strong and difficult race with good opponents, especially with the No. 30 car now. We’ll do the best we can and keep our fingers crossed for a good race.

Chris Cumming
We look forward to starting out in Shanghai with the good pace we had in Fuji.  We could have produced a better result there and will bring our best this weekend.