Le Mans Series – Silverstone – Prototype Round Up
The Best LMS Race Of The Year Those Peugeots have typically decimated the opposition this year – but for various reasons, the Silverstone race a) was less one-sided and b) had plenty of other prototype action to follow. Two of the highlights were the performance of the LNT Zytek and the late-race war between Stefan Mucke and Emmanuel Collard, for second overall. Let’s start with that Zytek performance though. Tom Chilton in the Arena P1 07S had suggested that the P2s might not be so competitive in the race, and with one exception, he was right. It wasn’t long into the race before a glance at the timing screen showed P1s filling the top eight positions – but that did change later on, and but for a broken wire, there might have been a very significant P2 car right among everything except the 908s. “It was a broken external wire to the alternator,” explained Zytek’s Trevor Foster, after the race. “The wire was covered by rubber boots, so we couldn’t see that it was broken straight away, but by then we’d decided to change the alternator (which includes that wire) and the battery, which was a bit low.” Danny Watts had started the #46 entry, and it turned out that he and Tom Kimber-Smith would simply split the race into two, and drive half each. Early on, Watts was all over the Charouz Lola, but that car had started on three of the four tyres that had been flat-spotted in Stefan Mucke’s big spin in qualifying. Mucke pitted after eight laps, so the P2 leader was third overall. Next up in P2 was Tommy Erdos, in tenth. 12 laps gone and Watts was only 18 seconds behind the race leader – and only four behind Sarrazin in #8. We never did find out why there seemed to be such a disparity in the performance of the Peugeots, particularly early on – but presumably #8 was simply going for a solid second place and the championship? But the good thing was that here was a petrol-powered prototype in touch with at least one Peugeot – which just happened to be a P2 car. But under the first Safety Car period, #46 ducked into pit lane, and straight into its garage, losing six laps. Thereafter, we had one of the great comeback drives – but the form of the Zytek P2 car in charging back into the top six, from last, was as much the drivers as the car, wasn’t it? Obviously they couldn’t have done it without the excellent P2 Zytek, but it was the drivers’ consistency and commitment, in heavy traffic, wasn’t it, that saw them make such progress? The whole lap times puzzle is a tough one to work out – confused as it was by the number of cars that were out on the track still circulating, even at the end. Only four cars completed less than 100 laps, and the other six that weren’t classified all completed between 140 and 187 laps. The total number of racing laps must constitute some kind of a record for 1000 kms around Silverstone. Incidentally, we probably made the right stab, first time, at the #8 Peugeot’s status at the end of the race, because it wasn’t classified – despite completing as many laps as the Barazi-Epsilon and Arena Zyteks, and one more than the LNT Zytek. But back to that #46 recovery drive – and whenever this addled brain looked at the #46 car’s lap times, they didn’t seem especially significant. But then every prototype was having every lap compromised by slower cars, wasn’t it? But there was #46 moving up the order – which was perfectly logical, because it was moving through the GT2 cars. At the two hour mark, Danny Watts was ahead of all the GT2s, and only had the four, fastest GT1 cars ahead of him. But here’s the significant point: Watts was now within four laps of the P2 leader, the ASM Lola. Yet he’d lost six laps to the front-runners (it would have been more but for the fact that the problem with that broken wire arose during the first SC period) – hadn’t he? That’s what a glance at the timing screen showed, once Watts was racing again, but perhaps it wasn’t quite six full laps? Let’s look at the time interval, rather than laps gap. 19 laps into the race, and the field was racing again, and the time interval between the race-leading Peugeot, the P2 leader and #46 looked like this:
#7
#40 – 22 secs
#46 – 9 mins 11 secs (or five and a half laps, rather than six) At 1 hour, 31 laps:
#7
#40 – 70 secs
#46 – 9 mins 46 secs At 2 hours, 66 laps
#7
#40 – 3 mins 7 secs
#46 –10 mins 53 secs At 3 hours, 102 laps
#7
#32 – 6 mins 50 secs
#46 –11 mins 59 secs So in two and a half hours racing or so, Danny Watts has:
Lost only 2 mins 48 seconds to the leading Peugeot
Reduced the gap to the leading P2 car from 533 seconds (nearly 9 minutes) to 309 seconds (just over 5 minutes). The #40 Lola had lost time and the class lead with its car owner at the wheel (and some traffic moments), but the LNT / Zytek team was making up ground off the track too, as Trevor Foster explains: “We were running the tyres for three stints, so we were making up time in the pit stops, as well as on the track.” With Tom Kimber-Smith in the car, the pattern continued: at four hours, #46 was only just over 3 minutes behind the #32 class leader (all these times need looking at in a general sense, depending on whether cars had just made or were just about to make pit stops – plus any Safety Car periods, which can influence track positions and elapsed times to cross the line). So in less than four hours the gap had come down from almost 9 minutes to just over three: Watts and TK-S had gained almost six minutes. How about that? They gained another minute in the fifth hour, on #32, and with an hour of the race left, it seemed possible that we might have a three car fight for the LMP2 win: the Embassy Radical had been going like a train – but it looked as though Warren Hughes was in some sort of trouble. He was. The Radical had come across a new problem: loose wheels, the cause of which the team hadn’t got to the bottom of immediately post-race. The wheels were causing pad knock-off, and Hughes then had the rear brakes lock, sending him into the gravel. The end of another great Embassy run: one chance left for the Radical this year, in Brazil.  |
Meanwhile Karim Ojjeh was driving very well, and it was the LNT Zytek that met a delay. Somehow, TK-S and Bill Binnie had come together, right at the end, but they separated themselves quickly enough for the #46 Zytek to finish a remarkable second in P2, ahead of the ASM Lola. Here's Danny Watts enjoying the moment. The reliability of the P2 cars in this race was as remarkable as the story of #46. Only one P2 failed to finish, the Bruneau Pilbeam, the first retirement of the race, 57 laps to its credit. Of course RML was running its typically strong race – second to the De Castro-driven ASM Lola - until Tommy Erdos was hit by the #51 Aston Martin, in the complex. That damaged one of the ‘legality panels’ (that’s what one team calls them anyway) behind a rear wheel, and a quick fix wasn’t enough of a fix to last the race. Before Mike Newton took over, a more permanent repair was carried out, but the team has devised a cure that saves the whole floor being replaced. Peugeot Sport might like to find out how they’ve done it…. But those two stops left RML unable to chase another win, and they split the ASM and Horag Lolas, which were third and fifth. “It’s about time, we’ve been waiting for this one!” commented Juan Barazi – who might have expected to have been a race winner in 2007 before now. Michael Vergers ran a very strong double stint in the middle of the race, while Karim Ojjeh reckoned that “it was kind of difficult, I don’t actually like running in first place. I tried to do the best I could, I didn’t have any mirrors and I had basically been given a car that was broken. At the end it was undriveable, but I saw the problems with the Embassy car so I knew I could slow down.” The Binnie Lola Zytek had been qualified very well by Chris Buncombe, but he felt that the balance was never right in the race – and lost all the electrics early on. He was stranded trying to get into the pits, but the car did re-fire, and all was well after that, although they lost out under the second SC, and Bill Binnie had that moment at the end, with #46. The Saulnier Courage led the class for the first time – thanks to a pit stop during the first SC, and then watching the rest pit after about an hour, while the similarly-powered Bruichladdich Radical had some moments, including being ‘hoofed off’ off on lap 1. Jacob Greaves had contact and a spin in the complex, but with traffic such as was seen throughout the race, this was a first LMS for the youngster to get through unscathed, which he did – and earned a point too. So thanks to the performance of the LNT Zytek, that was a good look at the P2 Class. What next for these privateer teams, with one race remaining in 2007? The points position reads: RML 36
ASM 30
Horag 25
Saulnier 22 It is our understanding, at this stage, that none of these four teams will be at Interlagos, so that means that RML has finally, deservedly, won the P2 Championship – except that we can’t be absolutely sure of that, yet. However, even if the ASM team travelled to Brazil, unless there are more P2 cars there than we believe are going, they can only score half points anyway. It’s an unfortunate way to end the 2007 season, with so few teams keen to attend the last race. Perhaps if they had been consulted before the race was inserted into the calendar, we might not have ended up in this position. The P1 race was a good one, for reasons already explained. But looking in more detail at some of the dramas, how about the #8 Peugeot 908 to start with. “Left rear” seemed to be the source of problems for a number of cars – and that was the tyre that went down on the #8 car, Felipe Ortiz hitting the carcass on Hangar Straight. Pedro Lamy and Stephane Sarrazin always looked likely to ease their way up to second again, and the LMP1 title (having dropped behind the works and Rollcentre Pescarolos, and the Charouz Lola) – but once the #8 was seen without its left rear legality panel, team managers up and down the pit lane were pointing it out to the officials. “Our official in the pits said that the race officials were aware of the Peugeot’s problem, and that it would be called in for repairs,” explains Martin Short. “That flashed up on the screen, then it went off, but the official was sure that the Peugeot would be pulled in. We then saw Daniel Perdrix being very firm with them in the pit lane.” It was apparent that M. Perdrix was not going to allow a flimsy repair, and with no time for the floor (and boxes) to be replaced, the #8 car was withdrawn from the race. This is an earlier stop, before the damage occurred. Second place would have virtually sealed the title for Lamy / Sarrazin, but as we thought immediately after the race, if a car doesn’t cross the line, it doesn’t score points, so the P1 points look like this: Lamy / Sarrazin 36
Boullion 34
Collard 30
Minassian / Gene 28 But with Henri Pescarolo apparently unlikely to head to South America (we didn’t find him to check that fact), it is simply between the Peugeot pairs, with Lamy / Sarrazin just needing the finish that they didn’t secure at Silverstone. Marc Gene had an odd incident even before the start of the race - ending up on the grass at Copse (below) on the warm-up lap. The ‘P1 petrol’ race was a good one. Creation and Rollcentre had much to be pleased about, Charouz had a great run until the late steering failure, while Collard and Boullion did what they do at every event – run hard and fast throughout. So did Joao Barbosa and Stuart Hall for Rollcentre, and Martin Short was delighted with his pair’s performance, with third in class, with the way Stuart Hall took on the responsibility of qualifying and starting – with the whole weekend really. “He’s got a wise head on old shoulders,” said Shorty after the race, of Stuart Hall. “He was pushed out by the Zytek at Copse on lap 1, and wisely backed out of it, ran wide onto the tarmac run-off, and then fought back. Joao pipped him for fastest lap near the end, but only by a few thousandths. Joao has been the heart of this team over the years, and he thoroughly deserves what he’s got lined up for next year, but perhaps he’ll be able to drive for us occasionally.” Sam Hignett at the Charouz team was surprised that we didn’t see him send out Stefan Mucke for the last stint, fractions ahead of Emmanuel Collard. The Frenchman had fresh rubber, Charouz gaining track position by not changing – and that set up the dice of the race. Mucke was hard but fair, but Collard is hard but fair too, and the move had to come before long. It did, in the complex, with some side to side contact, but the Pescarolo was through – and then there was Mucke stationary, with failed steering. What a shame, after another great run. Rollcentre moved up to the podium, Creation moved up to fourth, Arena to fifth and the sole Courage took an unrepresentative sixth, after Frei’s spin into the Luffield gravel. JC-W had been concerned about his pace perhaps dropping off in the race, but he ran very strongly in the opening phase, and was well in touch with the best of the P1s after two hours. But this double image picks out Creation’s problem – the little perspex ‘screen had been hit by flying rubber, and the drivers were taking a battering from the buffeting. Haruki Kurosawa suffered particularly, so Felipe Ortiz had another run, the disrupted air tending to flip the driver’s helmet visor open. JC-W’s best lap was a 1:38.3, which was quicker than everyone except those in numbers 7, 8 and 16. That was more than a second quicker than the Arena Zytek managed, this one delayed by a rear suspension repair, after Max Chilton hit a kerb. The Chamberlain-Synergy Lola was in legality panel troubles, and for once didn’t finish, Bob Berridge losing all drive shortly before the end. The Primat / Tinseau Pescarolo didn’t finish either (starter motor) after a good opening stint by Harold Primat. So there we are, the European season is over. Silverstone saw plenty of incident and drama, much of it related to the traffic – which was a factor throughout, thanks to the reliability of the whole field. It was a classic endurance race. What does Interlagos have in store, in November?
MC | 
