ByKolles could've won 2017 Le Mans 24 Hours - Oliver Webb
The ByKolles privateer LMP1 squad could have won last weekend's Le Mans 24 Hours with a clean run, according to team regular Oliver Webb
The Briton believes that victory in a race in which all five factory P1 cars encountered problems would not have been out of the question had the ByKolles team's ENSO CLM-NISMO P1/01 not retired early with engine issues.
Webb suggested that the car he shared with Marco Bonanomi and Dominik Kraihamer had the pace to out-run the LMP2 machinery that took the final two places on the overall podium behind the winning Porsche 919 Hybrid shared by Timo Bernhard, Brendon Hartley and Earl Bamber.
"There's a lot of ifs and buts, but we would have been comfortably ahead of all the P2s if we'd had a clean run," Webb told Autosport.
"Our calculations put us three laps ahead of the Porsche if we'd been able to do 3m24-25s through the race.
"Or we could have turned the thing down and cruised home to second."
He explained that those times should have been possible given that he had set a 3m25.9s on his only full-power lap before retirement.
The Nissan-engined ENSO CLM retired at the end of its seventh lap after overheating while returning slowly to the pits with front-end body damage sustained soon after the start.
The car picked up a front left puncture at Tertre Rouge on the opening lap, sending it across the asphalt run-off and damaging the nose.
"I heard a thud, lost the steering and went wide over the rumble stripes, which did what they're meant to do," Webb said.
"The nose was damaged and there was no air going through it. The team was on the radio saying the temperatures were going through the roof."
Webb was able to do one flying lap at full power before having to back off to try to save the engine.
ByKolles, which switched from its previous AER engine at the start of this season, encountered only minor issues in practice and qualifying for last weekend's blue-riband round of the World Endurance Championship, which gave it confidence over its reliability for the race.
The ByKolles team will contest the Nurburgring WEC round next month, but is not scheduled to undertake the five-race flyaway leg of the championship that starts at Mexico City in early September.
The team will instead begin a development programme ahead of the arrival of more cars in the privateer P1 class next year.
Selected outings over the final portion of the series have not been ruled out.
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