No ARC Bratislava in Fuji

ARC Bratislava has successfully finished the most challenging race of the year - the 24 hours of Le Mans. It’s the third finish line crossing out of four entries of the Slovakian team at this historic endurance race. Although the team remained disappointed from the result which was significantly affected by a stone smashing the oil cooler, they are already preparing for the next event coming up in Monza, Italy.

After the italian race, the fifth round is scheduled to happen below the japanese mountain of Fuji in September. Considering the current situation in logistics and sea freights, the deadline for boarding the carrier to Japan is very tight. Despite enormous efforts the small team from Slovakia won’t be able to secure its presence in the fifth race of FIA WEC and have to excuse themselves from leaving a gap in the pitlane.

Miro Konôpka: “We’re a small private-owned team, the only one from the Central European Zone participating in FIA WEC and ALMS. We just have one car and although we always try hard, it’s simply not feasible for us to prepare the car for the two remaining races and pack the freight container in one day only. It would not only mean rebuilding the car, but also repack everything from the truck to the shipping container, restock the soare parts and material. We’ll come back to the workshop from Monza on July 11th evening and on 13th we would need to depart to the port of Antwerp in order to catch the boat to Japan. We have neither enough staff nor equipment to deal with such a short deadline. During that one day we are not able to make the car ready for a world championship race level and make sure we come prepared. On the contrary to the teams with two or three or more cars, we see this deadline as impossible to catch.

Even if Monza would end without any impactful technical issues, shipping the car unprepared is a risk too high from safety perspective as well as from the point of view of expectations that are coming with a world championship race level.”

The team will focus on prepping the car for the last race of FIA WEC surrounded by the hot sands of Bahrain and will not miss the opportunity to challenge the Pro/Am classification results once again.