NewBlood by Morand Racing on the way to the test day of the 24 Hours of Le Mans

The #43 Morgan-Judd BMW with Dunlop tyres entered by NewBlood by Morand battled in the top positions, finishing third in Great Britain and building a strong lead in Italy before an oil pump failure. This year Benoit Morand and his team join the 24 Hours of Le Mans with a new driving squad. Christian Klien (Austria, b. 1983) will be resuming his Le Mans story (3 starts in 2008, 2009 and 2011), Romain Brandela (France, b. 1973) competed in 2012 and Gary Hirsch (Switzerland, b. 1987) will be one of the rookies of the 2014 edition. 

How do you look back at the ELMS rounds at Silverstone and Imola before reaching La Sarthe for the 24 Hours of Le Mans?

Benoit Morand: We are performing well despite a lack of speed in qualifying, and in race we kept the pace at Silverstone and Imola to battle for the top positions. Regarding the European Le Mans Series I think that nothing is lost yet but we clearly cannot afford another failure. I think we will be performing well at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. We must put things together to have a great race, hoping that “Lady Luck” will be on our side. 

The new driving line-up rapidly found the right pace and its own coherence. How are things with them?

Things are doing great regarding the drivers. Each of them is getting his job done, I fully trust Christian, Gary and Romain for Le Mans. 

Last year the team finished fifth in the LMP2 class for its first Le Mans start, what are your expectations for the 2014 24 Hours?

We hope that we will do even better than in 2013, but so many factors have to be taken into account. We will do our best to get the car and drivers well prepared but you cannot handle everything. I am confident in the fact that we can score a good result and aim at a podium finish.