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Tommy Milner says it will be difficult for the #74 Corvette team to fight back into contention for GTE Pro victory in this year's Le Mans 24 Hours, after the car shed its right-rear wheel on the run up to Dunlop.
The American had just handed the car back over to teammate Richard Westbrook after leading through his stint, but lost four laps to Giancarlo Fisichella while the Englishman retrieved the three-wheeled C6-ZR1 to the pits. The team was then also forced to make repairs to the floor.
"It's too early to say we're out of it," Milner told AUTOSPORT. "But we've lost five or six positions and they'd all need to have problems to bring us back into it, and the chances of that I guess are low."
Milner, who won the GTE Pro class at Le Mans in 2011, said he had no idea what had caused the problem.
"I don't know – the mechanic who put the wheel on said the nut was tight," he said. "When it came in there was nothing there so it's impossible to know. Maybe it threaded badly with the wheel or something. It's a shame, everything felt normal in my stint and we were going well."