Aitken is collaborating within the World Endurance Championship traditional for the third time, having contested it with the LMP2 Algarve Professional Racing squad in 2022 earlier than becoming a member of the Motion Specific Racing (rebranded Whelen Engineering Racing at Le Mans) Cadillac squad in IMSA.
He was on the wheel for the race begin at Circuit de la Sarthe final yr. Nevertheless, he was caught out by the damp monitor on the Daytona chicane on the very first lap and hit the wall.
Though the harm was not terminal, restore work was wanted; Aitken and team-mates Pipo Derani and Alexander Sims then misplaced eleven laps and any hopes of a podium end.
One yr on, the British driver is eager to repay his workforce’s belief with none knee-jerk response.
“I am probably not going to return into this Le Mans trying to change something,” he instructed Autosport.
“After final yr, I went via every thing a billion instances – as you’d.
“Ultimately, I am simply making an attempt to do one of the best job I can, and I barely overstepped. However I do not suppose that I drove like an fool.
Injury on the #311 in 2023.
Picture by: Nikolaz Godet
“I am fortunate that I’ve the help of the Cadillac crew. They’re all behind me, and so they do not consider I want to alter something main both.
“The worst factor could be to return into this yr’s race – whether or not I begin the race, or Pipo, or Felipe – to return in with a degree to show, as a result of that is whenever you make extra errors.”
Aitken is especially grateful that his workforce didn’t lose religion in him after his “actually heartbreaking” error. “I would not have blamed them in any respect if that they had, however they are a unbelievable group of individuals,” he praised. “And even when it hurts, they know that they make errors typically as properly, and so they did not maintain it towards me.
“If I do it a second time, they in all probability are free to kick me round a bit and name me all of the names. That is the distinction: you be taught from the error, you do not do it once more and you progress on.”
A winner on the Sebring IMSA spherical final yr, Aitken began the 2024 marketing campaign in convincing trend alongside Derani, with the duo taking three pole positions and as many second locations in 5 occasions.
This offers him “confidence in [his] capacity” and he actually would not lack ambition forward of a Le Mans race he and team-mates Derani and Felipe Drugovich will begin from 18th within the #311 Cadillac V-Sequence.R.
“I am dreaming of a podium,” Aitken admitted. “A prime step just isn’t out of query.
“Something can occur, and I do not suppose till the primary couple of stints occur within the race – that is after we get the clear image of the race. Even in qualifying, it is by no means fairly the identical.
“I will be crossing my fingers that Saturday afternoon we present good tempo, after which that shall be recreation on.”
