WEC: Strakka Dome to miss first two races

The all-new Strakka Dome LMP2 coupe will be absent from this weekend's World Endurance Championship opener at Silverstone and round two at Spa in May.

British race team Strakka and Japanese constructor Dome, which are jointly developing the S103 design, made the decision to withdraw from the first two WEC rounds after an unsuccessful first track test of the Nissan-engined car at Paul Ricard last week. The car completed only a limited number of laps over the course of the three days, although the team has yet to specify what problems it encountered.

"Everybody is hugely disappointed not to be out at Silverstone, but the simple fact is that the car is not yet ready to race and we need to do more testing," team owner and driver Nick Leventis said. "The 2014 season remains our development year ahead of potential customer programs, so we want to solve issues, not work around them."

A secondary consideration in the decision was a series rule that reduces the number of engines an LMP2 team can use over the course of the season without penalty from three to two if it misses the official WEC test, as Strakka was forced to do.

Strakka and Dome will now focus on development testing in private ahead of the new public debut of the S103 at the Le Mans Test Day on June 1 two weeks before the 24 Hours.

Last week's run followed a shakedown at the Turweston airfield near Strakka's Silverstone base at the start of the week of the official WEC test at Paul Ricard in late March. It was forced to skip the two-day test after technical issues were identified in the wake of the roll-out.

The Strakka Dome will be raced by Leventis, Danny Watts and Jonny Kane when it comes on stream at Le Mans.

Originally on Autosport.com