Team principal Sam Hignett has revealed that the quickest Jota has built up a 963 since starting racing the Porsche in the middle of last year is three weeks.
He stated that the team is aiming for a Friday evening completion of the rebuild of its #12 entry, which sustained monocoque damage during the Wednesday night practice session for the blue riband round of the World Endurance Championship.
“These is definitely going to be the fastest we have ever put a 963 together since we started this project last year,” Hignett told Autosport.
“These are complex racing cars, but we have to do it by Friday evening this time and we are confident we can do it.
“That’s our target because the guys are going to have a long night tonight and we want to give them a proper night’s sleep ahead of the start of the race on Saturday.”
Jota has also been given dispensation by the stewards to undertake a shakedown of the rebuilt car on Friday evening ahead of the pre-race warm-up at midday on Saturday.
It is understood that the car will be taken to a nearby airfield for the run.
A spare monocoque supplied by Porsche was delivered to the team early on Thursday afternoon.
Jota is required by regulation to build up #12 with the parts from the damaged car.
“It’s effectively just a chassis swap: all the running gear and bodywork has to come from our car - those are the rules,” explained Hignett.
The Jota Porsche sustained the chassis damage at the end of the two-hour FP2 session when the car went off at the Esses in the hands of Callum Ilott, who had earlier made it through to Thursday’s Hyperpole session in first qualifying.
Hignett revealed that a chassis insert stud had broken on the mounting of the bottom right front wishbone despite a relatively light impact with the barriers at the inside of the Esses.
He explained that Ilott’s shunt was the result of driver error, but that there were mitigating circumstances because a cockpit alarm went off during the fast sequence.
