The Nissan DeltaWing’s assault on the 15th annual Petit Le Mans event suffered a set-back in testing today when Gunnar Jeannette was struck by a GTC Porsche and forced into a violent roll.

The Nissan DeltaWing was only 4/10ths of a second slower than the fastest P2 car in sixth place on the timesheet in this afternoon’s session. Unfortuantely during the session Jeannette was passing a GTC class Porsche when he was struck in the left rear wheel.

The massive impact was measured at 7Gs on the team’s telementary system. Video footage from the Conquest Racing P2 car of Martin Plowman showed the Porsche bouncing off the exit kerb at turn 10b and into the Nissan DeltaWing as Jeannette was going by.

The car scraped down the road on its roll hoops before suffering a heavy impact with the wall and landing back on its wheels.

Jeannette was transferred to the track medical center but was soon released with no injuries suffered.

“Not the best of practice sessions, unfortunately,” Jeannette said.

“Everything was going well… I followed a GTC car through [turns] 10a and 10b and I had a run on him exiting the corner before the bridge and pulled almost completely past.

“He cut over to take the apex and made heavy contact with the left-rear of our car that sent me for a bit of a ride.

“Luckily, the guys built a very strong car.

“While the damage looks to be bad in photographs, the car took the impact quite well. We have all the spare parts to fix it and we have an excellent crew that got to work straight away and had the car stripped down remarkably quickly.”