Le
Mans 24 Hours 2009
Race
Press Release - Monday June 15th 2009
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.