LE MANS SERIES 2007
ROUND FIVE - SILVERSTONE UK

Oliver today helped the Luc Alphand Aventures team strengthen its claim on second place in the GT1 Teams and Drivers Championships after finishing in fifth place in the Silverstone 1,000 Kilometre race. The result would have been a good deal better had it not been necessary to replace a bent steering arm on the no. 72 car just after the three-hour mark - the result of unavoidable contact on an extremely busy Silverstone track. However, in the end, the day belonged to the crew of the no. 73 Corvette C5-R and its drivers, Sébastien Dumez, Jean-Luc Blanchemain and Vincent Vosse, who took their second podium finish of the season to the delight of the team.

With 45 cars on the 5.14km circuit, traffic was a major problem for all the drivers during today's 5 hour 41 minute race. Oliver Gavin took the start in the white no. 72 Corvette C6.R and set about showing his British fans what he does best - racing to the front. It took him just five laps to make his way to third in the GT1 category, after a great battle with Christophe Bouchut's Aston Martin DBR9, and the Briton soon found himself leading the class after electing not to stop during an early Safety Car period. He maintained this lead until his first stop on lap 31, and continued to hold a strong position within the top three (often in the lead) for the first two hours of the race.

Jérôme Policand continued the good work begun by his team mate for a further hour before unfortunately making contact, under braking, with a GT2 Spyker which damaged the right front steering arm of the Corvette. The team did an excellent and rapid job to replace the part and Policand rejoined the race after 13 minutes, but now six laps down to the class leader. Despite the best efforts of all three drivers in the no.72 car, there was not enough time available in the race to claw back the time they had lost and achieve a podium finish.

Oliver said afterwards: “Personally I am pleased with how the race went for me but I'm disappointed for the team as I wanted to help them as much as I could for the Championship. As things turned out, compared to the Larbre car's result, we are better off on points so that's not so bad. I felt very sorry for Jérôme because he drove very well but he had so much bad luck during his stint. They were just racing incidents and it's bad luck, one of those things.

“The traffic was crazy and a big issue for everyone,” he continued. “There was lots of touching and bumping going on everywhere. There were a lot of cars on a track that is one third the size of Le Mans, and everything is condensed, with a lot of drivers who seemed to have little experience in sports car racing. That made it quite tricky and interesting when you have to pass five or six cars a lap. Some drove very erratically which is only natural when you are not used to being on a track with so many cars - I think it can be quite scary - but that was certainly a new thing for me to deal with.

“It was great to race at Silverstone again, in the Le Mans Series. I had a huge amount of fun and really appreciated all the team's efforts, especially Steve Cole [my engineer from Pratt & Miller] and Alex Roberge [Pratt & Miller's customer liaison engineer with Luc Alphand Aventures]. They worked very hard last night thinking about the handling problems we had had through the practice days, and they came up with a very good solution for the warm up this morning. That's what made us fast in the race - we even got fastest GT1 lap of the race!

“I was very happy with the car and hopefully we will be able to take the same car on to Interlagos in Brazil as I think we would have a very good chance of winning.”