Le Mans Endurance Series 2005
Round 2. Monza 1000 Kilometers. July 8th - 9th - 10th 2005
Race Report

LMES - Monza - RML Race - July 10th

After the frustrations of qualifying, when Thomas Erdos was forced to cut short his run even before it had started, the RML MG Lola would start Round 2 of the 2005 LMES at Monza from the sixth row. It certainly wasn’t where he’d hoped to be, but ahead of 1000 kilometers and five hours of racing, being a few metres further down the grid probably didn’t make a great deal of difference. In his favour were four Michelin tyres that were little more than gently scrubbed, and a car that was handling superbly. Not surprisingly, he viewed the race ahead with some confidence.

As the long train of forty-five starters snaked through the Parabolica in preparation for the start, Erdos was already eyeing up the road ahead, anticipating his chances during the opening lap. Whatever they were, he made the most of them, and by the time the pack thundered round to finish lap one, he was already up into third place in LMP2, and chasing down hard on the tail of Vincent Vosse in the #36 Belmondo Courage. That meant Gareth Evans in the Chamberlain Lola and Peroni in the Lucchini had both been passed, and it was tenth place overall for Erdos.

He and Vosse were clearly the quickest of the LMP2 runners at this stage, and Andre in the #37 C60 was under enormous pressure right from the word go. Five laps into the race, and he succumbed, allowing not only his team-mate Vosse through into the class lead, but also seeing Erdos sweep by in pursuit.

At first it looked as though Vosse had the legs on the MG, although a surreptitious tweak on the boost might have accounted for this early spurt. Whatever the cause, it only lasted a brief handful of laps, and by the time the cars came through for the eighth time, Erdos was tucked neatly under the rear of the Courage and pushing hard. The gap back to Andre had already extended to over four seconds and was visibly getting larger by the second. Already having to contend with the slowest of the GT2 runners, the gap between Vosse and Erdos fluctuated lap by lap, but never by enough to suggest that the Frenchman had an upper hand. Then, in a delightful move through Parabolica, Erdos saw the opening he needed on lap 13 and snuck ahead. “I had to work for it!” he said. “He was pushing hard, but it was a nice clean pass.” He was now eighth overall and leading LMP2. So much for the frustrations of a troubled qualifying! “We didn’t qualify where we should have done,” suggested Erdos. “We knew we had more speed than that, and I felt sure we could move up, but I hadn’t really expected to be leading LMP2 inside twenty minutes!”

So, the order in LMP2 was Erdos, Vosse, Andre and then a charging Vergers in the Kruse C65, followed by Didier Theys in the all-new Horag Lista Lola. Evans was still slipping back, but nowhere near as far as Adam Sharpe in the fourth Lola, who was already in the pits, race effectively over for the Binnie Motorsports outfit. Out at the very front, Shimoda and Collard were easing away rapidly from the rest of the field, and had already established a thirty-second lead over Gounon, bottlenecking in third.

For the next few laps Erdos and Vosse battled through the tail-enders. Like waves on the foreshore, the margin between them ebbed and flowed, as did the gap to Barbosa, next-up in the Rolcentre Dallara, variously between two and ten seconds ahead of Erdos in seventh. A little further back there was a titanic struggle going on for tenth between Didier Andre and Michael Vergers. On lap 21 it all came to a head, with Vergers getting ahead, but at what cost? Andre was pit-bound a lap later in the Belmondo Courage (into the garage - another LMP2 gone from the chase), and Vergers lost four places to end up fourteenth, albeit still running strongly at first, before he too pitted on lap 24. It was the beginning of the end for the #37 Courage, however, which would lose fifteen laps and then retire soon afterwards. Vergers and the Kruse Courage did rejoin, but their race also ended relatively early, retiring at two-thirds distance.

No such problems for Erdos or Vosse. Although they’d swapped places, the rivalry was no less intense and there was little to choose between them on lap-times alone. With twenty-three laps completed the LMP1 leaders were coming through to lap them, but the first scheduled pitstops were not far away, and Tommy Erdos peeled off into the pitlane with fifty minutes gone, allowing Vosse back into the lead. It was a routine and very rapid pitstop for the accomplished RML crew, so it was only a temporary change of leader in LMP2. As soon as the Belmondo car came in on lap 29, Erdos was back ahead once again. By dint of its now famous fuel-efficiency – remember Spa? - Gareth Evans found himself back in contention once again aboard the Chamberlain Lola, and for some while would enjoy the position of third in class, just ahead of Theys in the third Lola chassis.

Not only were Erdos and Vosse easing away in LMP2, they were also making good inroads on the overall standings. By lap 37, when Jan Lammers made an unscheduled pitstop in the LMP1 RfH Dome, the two LMP2 front-runners were 7th and 8th. Elsewhere, Evans had pitted, and Peroni in the Lucchini had moved into third after passing Theys. It was looking like a good run for the Italians.

After an hour of flat-out sprinting, Vosse had finally started to ease off just a little, and his laptimes were a second or more off their earlier pace. Erdos, sitting in front of the normally-aspirated Judd, had no such concerns, and maintained a steady succession of laps that clocked 1:44 or thereabouts. It was an excellent race pace, and enough to ensure that the MG started to pull out a significant lead in the class. From such foundations are wins built, and such was the outlook for RML at this (relatively early) stage of the race.

An hour and a quarter gone, and Collard and Shimoda, still only separated by a handful of seconds, came through to lap the LMP2 leaders for the second time. Minassian, now in third place after finally finding a way round Gounon, was the only other runner not to have been lapped, such was the extraordinary pace of the two LMP1 leaders. It’s all relative of course. In much the same way, Erdos and Vosse were a full two laps clear of Theys, now back into third place in LMP2, 9th overall, after a minor electrical problem.

The second round of pitstops was fast approaching, and with it the chance for some of the leaner machines to move up the order. Lap 55, with ninety minutes gone, Erdos was running fifth overall. That soon became fourth, and when the Brazilian took to the pitlane to complete his opening double-stint, it was from an impressive third place overall. It was a position he briefly handed on to Vosse while Mike Newton was being strapped into the cockpit of the MG. It all unraveled neatly, as it usually does, and when Vosse handed over to Gosselin two laps later, Newton was back into the lead once more, with Gosselin second, Tinseau temporarily third in the #31 del Bello Racing Courage and Peter Owen fourth in the Chamberlain Lola.

It’s at times like these that certain reporters and pseudo-pundits from the weekly rags – those who should know better - make disparaging remarks about gentlemen drivers. I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to relate that the next forty laps saw Mike Newton not only maintain RML’s hold on the class lead, but extend it. His pace was nothing if not impressive, and there was no-one in LMP2 who seemed able to match the consistency and pace he was setting. Gosselin certainly failed to get the better of him, and while the two class leaders circulated almost in unison, fifth and sixth overall, the gap between them remained perfectly constant. Both were lapped once again by the leaders, but nothing unexpected in that – so was everyone else on the track! “Mike drove so well,” said Erdos. “It was a fantastic stint, quite brilliant. I gave him the car P1 with a thirty-second lead, and he brought the car back P1, still with a good gap. It was excellent.”

Newton’s first and uneventful pitstop came at the end of lap 88, and was enough to allow Gosselin a brief period as leader, until he too made a routine pitstop a few laps later. The extended run didn’t favour the Courage, however, and booted up with fresh Michelins, Newton was running two seconds a lap faster after his pitstop. Also running strongly, as it had throughout, was the Chamberlain-Synergy Lola, now firmly established in third place, although two laps down on the battle for the lead.

At half distance the overall leader was still the Pescarolo, now with Bouillion at the wheel, a minute clear of Jamie Campbell-Walter in the Creation DBA, followed by John Stack in the Team Jota Zytek and Martin Short in the Rollcentre Dallara. That was the sum of LMP1 dominance in this race, since fifth place was occupied most comfortably by Mike Newton and the RML MG, half a lap clear of Gosselin. Over the course of the next thirty minutes, Newton eased further into the clear, and when he pitted on lap 119, he had very nearly enough in his pocket to ensure that Erdos came back out again in the lead. Almost, but not quite.

It all looked perfect. Erdos was back out onto the track after a swift and trouble-free pitstop, and it would only be a matter of minutes before Gosselin pitted and allowed the MG back into the lead. That was the expectation anyway. The truth was somewhat different. Within five laps, Erdos was back into the pitlane, and this time it was an undignified trolley up the backside for the MG, as the car was dragged into the garage. “I wasn’t sure exactly what the problem was,” he said later. “All I knew was that the car was crabbing sideways. It almost felt as though I had had a broken driveshaft, but when I got back to the garage we discovered that it was the right rear upright – the piece that holds the disc in place.”

Memories of that last-hour suspension failure at Le Mans must have been running through everyone’s consciousness at RML as they saw the state of the rear right hub. There was no hesitation. There never is with these guys. In a matter of seconds the offending part was consigned to the parts bin at the back of the garage, and new components were being fitted. It took the equivalent of eight laps to repair the car, by which time Gosselin was a distant speck on the proverbial horizon and Bob Berridge, giving the Chamberlain Lola its best laptimes of the day, had made up the two-lap deficit and turned it into a six-lap advantage. To make matters worse, on lap 129, Phil Bennett came by in the Kruse to take fourth. Not for long. Two laps later he too was into the garage, never to re-appear. Not so Erdos and the RML MG. Phoenix-like, they were up and running again with an hour and ten still to go. As they say, this is motorsport, and anything can happen. It certainly did at Le Mans, but could fate favour RML a second time?

After so much time lost in the pitlane the challenge facing Erdos looked insurmountable. From fifth overall, the MG had sunk to fourteenth. Remarkably, with the Kruse’s demise, this still equated to third in LMP2, but any realistic chance of rising higher in the class rested wholly on the misfortune of others. There were overall positions to reclaim, however, and Erdos set about those with verve. For the remainder of the race he set down some of the fastest laps the car had done all day, and steadily picked off the GT1 runners that had crept ahead during the pitstop. Another routine pitstop came and went without incident, and the MG rose back into the top ten once again, but another brief pitstop just three laps from the end knocked him back to eleventh. “At the last refuel there was a little problem with the telemetry, and we weren’t exactly sure how much had gone into the tank,” clarified Erdos. “Just to be on the safe side I came in for a quick top-up. It had also started to rain, so we fitted wets. There was such a huge gap both ways by then that there wasn’t a lot to lose, so we played safe."

He took the flag eleventh overall, third in class.

“That was really very disappointing,” admitted a disconsolate Tommy Erdos. “It had all looked so rosy at one point, and then we had that problem. Eight laps was a lot to lose, and far too much to make up. We were lucky to finish on the podium,” he added, almost with surprise. “From that aspect, it’s still been a positive result. OK, we were leading and looking for a win, but somehow we still managed to save a podium. That gives us valuable points towards the championship, and we still have three races to go. We also showed that our combination of team and drivers can win. Now all we need to do is convert that potential into a reality. Perhaps Silverstone?”

The team is sure of a massive amount of support when they race on home ground next month. The car enjoys an enthusiastic following, especially amongst the MG fraternity, and where better to prove a point than at Silverstone. In the meantime, we wish Mike and his family a pleasant holiday in Malta. Sunshine and warmth, evenings sipping wine on the terrace. Just like here, really.

Marcus Potts

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