Corsa hybrid 'vindicated' by Laguna

At the end of a tough first season, the car ran second overall at Laguna Seca and was able to battle with the LMP1 Acuras before a broken wire and later a puncture dropped Mowlem and team-mate Stefan Johansson back to fifth.

"I think we showed at Laguna that we're not the idiots people thought," Mowlem told AUTOSPORT.

"We got to the point where we finally proved that there is more to this than just marketing. With the right support and resources, I suspect in three or four years virtually every major manufacturer with a factory programme will be running a hybrid.

"The general public at large were probably a bit sceptical about us, and we proved a big point at Laguna, which is probably why I found it so satisfying."

He said the race was far more rewarding than Corsa's outright podium at Lime Rock, which was its best actual finish of the year.

"For the first time we really featured [at Laguna]," said Mowlem. "Okay, we finished third at Lime Rock, but the Acuras were in a different league - we were about two and a half, three minutes behind.

"Whereas after two hours at Laguna, we were actually only about 10s behind the leaders, so that just shows the difference in performance."

Mowlem reckons that without the problems that delayed the car, it would have been in the thick of the lead fight between the De Ferran and Fernandez Acuras at the end of the four-hour race.

"If we had carried on at the speed we were running, I'm not saying we would have won, but there's no doubt in my mind that instead of a two car fight at the end, it would have been a three car fight," he said.

"I genuinely thought we were going to finish second overall as a minimum, because we were comfortably ahead of the Fernandez car, and although that's quick on a clear lap, it's the only car that's slower than us on the straight, so that was the one car I thought we could comfortably stay ahead of."