RML
AD Group’s 2009 Le Mans stalls on 18 hours
Mike
Newton, Thomas Erdos, Chris Dyson and the entire
RML pit crew, lead by Team Manager Phil Barker,
suffered the frustration of a third engine failure
of the season when the team's Lola B08/96 retired
from last weekend's Le Mans 24 Hours. This time,
however, the disappointment was even more intense,
not only because the engine gave way during
the most important race of the motorsport year,
but also because the Lola Coupé had,
until that point, excelled itself.
Aside
from a brief glitch for a replacement set of
plugs at 2:15 on Sunday morning, the car had
run faultlessly for the best part of eighteen
hours. “Everything was going so well,
and the engine was pulling strongly and felt
very good,” said Thomas Erdos. “We’d
been able to run at a competitive pace throughout
the race, and we were still in contention for
a podium right up until the moment the engine
let go.”
Erdos
had taken the race start, and challenged hard
for third in LMP2 throughout his opening triple
stint, constantly harrying Jonny Kane in the
#33 Speedy Racing Team Sebah Lola-Judd. Aside
from the inevitable consequence of making out-of-sequence
pitstops, the #25 Lola-Mazda retained fourth
in class for more than ten hours, and while
the pair of Porsche RS Spyders consolidated
their hold on the top two positions, the two
Lola coupés looked equally comfortable
in third and fourth. “Until the lap before
the engine let go, I was feeling really chuffed
with the way the car was going,” admitted
Thomas Erdos. “To be running so strongly
at such a late stage in the 24 Hours is always
a special feeling, and we were beginning to
think we might make it.”
“The
chassis is obviously excellent,” stated
Ray Mallock, Founder and Chief Executive at
RML. “Apart from the plug change and the
eventual engine failure, the car ran like clockwork.
After the problems we’ve experienced previously
this year (in the Le Mans Series) it was perhaps
expecting a great deal to hope for a better
result here, but the team did a superb job –
as usual – both in the garage and on the
track.”
Mike
Newton was perhaps the most disappointed of
anyone within the team, and found it difficult
to express his emotions. "It's terribly
frustrating, when we'd been holding a strong
fourth place, and closing on third," he
said. "We knew that even the smallest problem
for any of the cars ahead of us and we'd have
been into a podium position, but as soon as
I heard the noise from the engine, I knew it
was all over."
His
co-driver, Thomas Erdos, searched for something
positive from the result. “Setting aside
the enormous disappointment I feel now, we have
to be encouraged by how much we’ve achieved,"
he said. "After the problems we've had
previously this season in the Le Mans Series,
if the engine had failed after just two or three
hours, that would effectively have been the
end of our season. Now we must consolidate,
think through our strategy for the rest of the
year, and see where we go from here."
"We
also have to consider the team as a whole,"
said Mike Newton. "The guys do a great
job, and they put their heart and soul into
every aspect of their work. It's an absolute
passion on their part, and the engineers and
mechanics behind the scenes are the ones who
make all this possible. In situations like this,
their disappointment is every bit as great as
ours as drivers, and over the coming weeks we
will be working closely with Mazda to seek a
resolution to the problems at AER.”
The
exact nature of the fault will not be established
until the unit can be taken back to the workshops
and dismantled, but the RML Lola-Mazda covered
a total of 273 laps of the 13.629 kilometre
circuit at an average speed of 192 km/h; some
3721 kilometres in total. The class was eventually
won by the Team Essex Porsche RS Spyder #31,
with the Speedy Racing Team Sebah Lola #33 second,
and the Oak Racing Pescarolo #24 a distant third.
LMP2
- Result
Pos |
No. |
O/all |
Team |
Driver |
Car |
Laps |
Time |
1 |
31 |
10 |
Team
Essex |
Collard/Elgaard/Poulsen |
Porsche
RS Spyder |
357 |
3:40.880 |
2 |
33 |
12 |
Speedy
Sebah |
Pompidou/Luenberger/Kane |
Lola
B08/80 Coupé |
342 |
3:45.098 |
3 |
24 |
20 |
Oak
Racing |
Nicolet/Hein/Yvon |
Pescarolo
Mazda |
325 |
3:55.092 |
4 |
32 |
28 |
Barazi
Epsilon |
Barazi/Berville/Moseley |
Zytek GZ07S |
308 |
3:50.216 |
|
|
|
|
RETIREMENTS |
|
|
|
5 |
5 |
34 |
Team
Goh |
Ara/Kunimoto/Maassen |
Porsche
RS Spyder |
339 |
3:40.976 |
6 |
25 |
36 |
RML
AD Group |
Erdos/Newton/Dyson |
Lola
B08/86 Coupé |
273 |
3:44.816 |
7 |
39 |
39 |
Kruse
Schiller M/s |
Marsh/Noda
/dePourtales |
Lola
B05/40 |
261 |
3:51.656 |
8 |
35 |
43 |
Oak
Racing |
Ajlani/Lahaye/Moureau |
Pescarolo
Mazda |
208 |
3:46.704 |
9 |
30 |
44 |
Racing
Box |
Biagi/Bobbi/Piccini |
Lola
B08/86 Coupé |
203 |
3:45.496 |
10 |
41 |
49 |
GAC
Racing Team |
Ojeh/Gosselin/Peter |
Zytek GZ07S |
102 |
3:49.206 |
11 |
26 |
52 |
Bruichladdich |
Bruneau/Greaves/Rostan |
Radical
SR9 AER |
91 |
3:56.828 |
12 |
40 |
53 |
Quifel
ASM |
Amaral/Pla/Smith |
Ginetta
Zytek GZ09S |
46 |
3:44.704 |
Please
click on any of the images to access higher
resolution versions.
All photographs must be credited to: David
Lord / Dailysportscar
Additional
photographs are available from the Le
Mans Gallery