Tunbridge Wells based JOTA Sport begins this year’s 4 Hours of Silverstone race on Saturday determined to gets its 2015 European Le Mans Series campaign off to a flying start.

Simon Dolan, Filipe Albuquerque and Harry Tincknell race the Gibson 015S Nissan aiming to erase the bitter memories of last year’s corresponding Silverstone race.

Britain’s Le Mans 24 Hour race winning LM P2 team ultimately finished second in the ELMS Driver and Team standings – missing both titles by just four points.

Four top-four finishes – including one win and two podium placings – a fastest race lap and four pole-position race starts in the five race series incredibly failed to earn JOTA the championship.

An unfortunate non-score in the opening Silverstone race ultimately cost the team dear. Having led throughout apart from the pit-stop phases and with just 48 minutes remaining Dolan, on his “in” lap at the end of a great triple stint with Tincknell suited and booted in the garage awaiting Simon’s arrival, was edged off the track by an errant GT car and into instant retirement.

For Dolan, the chance to go one step further and bring the Frant team some success is a chance too good to miss:

“We’ll be going flat out from the first moment of opening practice but very mindful of the need to score big points. It’s a relatively short championship and therefore every race and every point is very important as we found out last year.”

“We had victory taken away from us in the closing stages of last year’s Silverstone race having fought so hard. To be taken out be a ‘wandering’ Ferrari was very hard to take.It was so unnecessary.”

“Like most drivers, I love the flowing nature of the current Silverstone circuit, and of course the high-speed sections, but I’m not the biggest fan of the ‘new’ sections.”

“It’s long with some interesting and quite difficult sections in which you can lose or gain a fair amount of time. Definitely it needs thought.”

Albuquerque and Tincknell are Audi Sport and Nissan NISMO contracted FIA World Endurance Championship drivers respectively, “loaned” to JOTA Sport for its ELMS campaign.

Two practice sessions for the anticipated 35-car field are staged on Friday with qualifying around the 18-corner, 3.667-mile Silverstone “Grand Prix” circuit the following morning. The 4 Hour race is schedule to start at 2.30pm on Saturday afternoon.