Strakka’s Dome S103 – Nissan made its debut this year at the team’s home track, Silverstone, for the FIA World Endurance Championship season opener. After finishing third there, and sixth at Spa, the team decided it needed a big change to properly gauge how their Dome performed against the rest of the LM P2 field.

“We had a year off last year because we had quite a few problems when we first got the car,” Kane said. “We’ve done a lot of redesign on the car: some aero, some rear suspension. At the minute, the car feels pretty good.

“We started the season on Michelin tires,” he continued. “We were the only car in the WEC Championship out of 10 that was on Michelin tires. Everybody else was on Dunlop. We were a little off the pace in the dry. We needed to basically take that question out of the equation: was it tire related or was it a bigger problem? We made the difficult decision about a month ago and we did the test day on Dunlops and it seemed to go reasonably well. We’re in a position now where we’re trying to get as much information as we can about the tire, which we haven’t worked with before and try to catch up with everyone that has been using it.”

It was a tough decision for Strakka, who already have their hands full developing a new chassis, and also have a long relationship with Michelin. Keep in mind they are a one-car team as well, which means no sister car to compare notes with.

“We had a really good relationship with Michelin for a number of years,” Kane said. “We’ve used their tires since we came into this, so we didn’t make the decision lightly, but we had to make sure we were the same as everyone else and then we’ll know. We’ve definitely been playing catch up for the first part of this season.”

The switch to Dunlop already showed its usefulness during the tricky conditions of the Test Day.

“We had a productive Test Day even though the weather was very mixed,” Kane said. “It worked out quite well for us, because Dunlop has an intermediate. Michelin does not. It is totally different for us and we got a lot of information that was really useful.”

Kane and co-drivers Nick Leventis and Danny Watts will put that information to good use on Saturday, June 13, when the 24 Hours of Le Mans goes green at 15h00!

Erin Cechal / ACO

Photo : LE MANS (SARTHE, FRANCE), 24 HOURS OF LE MANS CIRCUIT, 24 HOURS OF LE MANS, THURSDAY 11TH JUNE 2015, QUALIFYING PRACTICE. Strakka's Jonny Kane watches on from the garage.