Le
Mans Endurance Series 2005
Round 5. Istanbul 1000 Kilometers. November 12th - 13th
2005
Race Report
LMES
- Istanbul - RML Race Report
It’s almost certainly apocryphal,
but I believe it was George Bush who is supposed to have
said that the French don’t have a word for déjà vu.
Whatever, Mike Newton knows exactly what it means, and how
it feels. Last weekend he missed out on a championship title
by a whisker, and largely for the want of someone to finish
a strong second when he needed one. Back in his Formula
Ford days he thought he’d won a title too, winning the last
race of the season with his nearest rival running third,
except the driver in second went off at the last corner.
On that occasion, just as in Istanbul, he won the race but
not the title, but it never feels quite the same.
So
Istanbul and the final round of the 2005 Le Mans Endurance
Series gave Mike and co-driver Tommy Erdos the win that
they’d so long deserved – and from that point of view it
must have been hugely satisfying - but to have come so close
to the title and missed out by a single point made this
a bittersweet victory. Just minutes from the end of six
arduous hours their nearest rivals had stood third, and
the title as well as the win was within their grasp. Deteriorating
conditions and a spin for Thed Bjork, running strongly until
that moment, eventually gave Guy Smith second place for
Chamberlain-Synergy Motorsport, and with that the points
Gareth Evans needed to clinch the crown.
The event proved to be
one of the best of races, and also one of the worst. For
nail-biting tension and unpredictability, mixed with masterful
displays of driving and team tactics, it couldn’t be bettered.
It proved conclusively that the genuine endurance race can
be entertaining throughout. Unfortunately, the conditions
endured by the drivers were appalling. Torrential rain on
a surface that failed to drain effectively, combined with
inexplicably severe tyre wear, made this one of the most
dangerous races in years. Return to top
The Race, blow by blow
The morning started with
an early wake-up call ahead of official warm-up at eight
o’clock. In the past RML has been known to give this the
slip, but with the unpredictability of the weather over
Istanbul, both Thomas Erdos and Mike Newton were given a
brief handful of laps each. The times weren’t significant,
but any additional experience around the Park most certainly
was, and both drivers made the most of the extra track-time.
Not so the guys in the Chamberlain Synergy Lola, who enjoyed
a few extra minutes in bed that morning and gave warm-up
a miss – or watched it from the warm and dry of the Media
Centre!
Having been relegated to
the back of the grid for an infringement of the pit exit
white-line rule, Thed Bjork and Didier Theys must have been
quite pleased to set fastest time in the Horag Lista Lola,
while Michael Vergers (also due to start from the back)
set a close second in the Barazi Courage. Both would play
significant roles in the race ahead.
As
the morning developed, so did the clouds. By the time it
came for the teams to form up on the grid, it was almost
impossible to see the hills surrounding the circuit, and
the distant views of Istanbul glimpsed on Saturday were
now a distant memory. Some might say that was a blessing.
Although the conditions weren’t exactly good, at least it
wasn’t yet raining, and a hint of brightness to the east
suggested it might improve. Perhaps it was for that reason
that some teams, including Chamberlain, chose the intermediate
tyre option, while the majority played safe and sent their
drivers out on full wets. Thomas Erdos, lining up on the
inside of row four, was one such driver, and had a clear
view of Guy Smith, starting the #39 one row ahead on the
outside. Return to top
Race Start
Headlights ablaze, the
thirty-three starters weaved their way down the back straight
and through the final complex, desperately trying to get
some heat – any heat – into their tyres. The Audi pace car
pulled aside and the leaders were released. With a billowing
of spray and a rising crescendo of noise, they poured down
the main straight towards Turn 1. Collard was clear in the
lead, with Chilton tight on his tail in second, but matters
immediately behind were less clear. Minassian in the Zytek
had made a good start, but better still was Barbosa in the
#8 Dallara and Smith, who’d made a blinder in the Synergy
Lola to edge McNish and the Oreca Audi into sixth. They
rounded the left-hander safely, but just behind them Jean-Marc
Gounon was on a charge from ninth to a potential seventh,
elbowing his way between Erdos and Hancock. The Brazilian
wisely held back, but Hancock was vulnerably placed on the
outside, where the Courage caught him a glancing blow. “Gounon
was pushing too hard, I could see that. He made contact
with the Zytek into that first corner, so I just hung back
and played cautious. I didn’t want to get collected by someone
else so early in the race!” said Tommy afterwards. “That
made my life a bit difficult for that first lap.”
Behind Erdos came Jouanny
in the second Rollcentre Dallara, with the two Belmondo
Courages making up the top twelve. It became evident during
that first lap that conditions were not going to be as easy
as some might have hoped, as Guy Smith soon discovered.
His brilliant start turned unpleasant, and from fifth he’d
dropped back to ninth by the end of the lap, bringing him
right under the nose of Erdos’s MG. The only person who
seemed to be enjoying himself was Emmanuel Collard in the
leading Pescarolo, with a clear view and a car that was
doing exactly what he asked of it. He was two and a half
seconds clear as they crossed the line to start lap two.
Although he’d lost a lot
of ground, Smith was eager to make it up again, but now
had a resolute Erdos in tow. As they descended on Turn 12
for the third time the leading pack of LMP2 runners was
line-astern, with André almost as close to the rear wing
of the MG as the MG was to Smith’s Lola. Barring their way
was Jean-Marc Gounon, now struggling with an ill-handling
Courage. Smith looked for an opening around the outside,
but Gounon slammed the door shut, leaving a gaping hole
up the inside, into which Erdos and André flowed with ease.
Wide round thirteen, they had the inside line at fourteen,
and were both through by the time they reached the straight.
From tenth, Erdos was no eighth and leading LMP2. Gounon,
meanwhile, had paid dearly for his recklessness, and pitted
at the end of the next lap.
Having gained the class
lead, the challenge for Erdos was now to hold on to it.
With Smith out of the way and being pressurised by Vosse
in the second Belmondo Courage, André was proving relentless
in his challenge on the RML machine. A fast 1:57.188 from
Erdos was the quickest anyone in had yet done in LMP2, and
offered him a breather, but as they entered the tailenders
of GT2, André closed in again. Smith a few lengths behind,
was maintaining a watching brief. At the end of lap six
André made his first move, running wide and deep out of
eleven and down towards twelve. He got alongside, but this
time Erdos was able to fend him off cleanly. At the end
of the next lap, the Frenchman tried it again, only to fall
foul of a wayward GT2 Porsche that gave Erdos another breather.
Lap eight and it was André’s turn to come under pressure,
making an error through ten that allowed Smith to close
right up. With Erdos now looking for a way round Hancock
in the Zytek, it looked as though he’d escaped for a moment,
but it didn’t last long.
Unexpectedly held up by
the LMP1 Zytek, Erdos was back under pressure again by the
end of lap ten. While Smith stabbed away on either side
of André Erdos was OK, but after the yellow Lola had been
blocked, unintentionally, by one LNT TVR’s, the Belmondo
Courage was able to draw close again, leaving the three
LMP2 leaders nose-to-tail again down the main straight.
Through the traffic the gap oscillated back and forth until,
perhaps as foretold several laps earlier, André finally
managed to make the clean air he’d needed on that run down
to Turn 12. In a trice he’d nipped through on the inside
and snatched the lead.
For a moment it looked
as if the MG was in difficulties, but when Erdos’s pace
picked up again it became harder to tell. “The car had loads
of understeer, right from the beginning,” explained Erdos.
“Guy was on Inters, I think, but he was quicker than me
in those early laps – at least until the rain came down
heavier.” Driving round the handling problem, Erdos tried
his utmost to defend his position, but it was a difficult
challenge. Three times Smith managed to get alongside the
MG, and three times Erdos held his line into the next corner.
Finally, at the end of lap sixteen, Smith finally found
his way through.
Through all this André
had been building up a modest lead in the #37 Belmondo Courage,
but contact with the black JMB Ferrari on lap 17 sent him
into a spin that cost him that and more. In a flash, Smith
and Erdos were both through, and the powder-blue Courage
was back into third. Through more traffic Smith pulled out
a three-seconds lead over Erdos, with André a similar distance
behind. At this point Vincent Vosse was seventeen seconds
down in fourth, with Vergers a mere four seconds to his
rear having started from the back row. Didier Theys, also
a back-row starter, was a distant sixth in LMP2.
With Smith now setting
class-quickest laps just below one fifty-six mark, compared
to a best of 1:56.375 for Tommy the Chamberlain Synergy
car looked to be easing away. It was something of an illusion,
caused by the traffic. What was more blatant was the next
move from André. A highly creditable 1:55.250 was his best
lap yet, and when the #76 Porsche spun off right in front
of Erdos at Turn 12, it allowed him to close right down
on the MG. Then, coming through Turn 9, he made a lunge
that was simply never an overtaking move. It was lap 22.
“He came at me from nowhere!” said Erdos. “He smashed straight
into the side of me. It was a very risky move, almost like
a professional foul. Maybe he has nothing to lose today,
but his team mate (in the #36) has a chance for the title.
I can’t believe it wasn’t deliberate. There was no way he
was trying to overtake me – not there into Turn 9.” The
Brazilian was evidently very upset, but justice was seen
to be done. “Luckily he came of worse,” continued Erdos.
“There was only slight damage to the left hand side of the
MG and I was able to carry on, but he had to pit, I think.”
Indeed he did, and the #37 never again played a significant
role in the race.
Tommy was now holding station
on Smith, with barely any difference in their times, although
Smith enjoyed a lead of some seven seconds. Minutes later,
however, the drizzle turned to rain and the inters on Smith’s
car lost their edge. On full wets, despite the understeer,
Erdos started to narrow the gap once again, sometimes by
as much as two seconds a lap. “I settled into a pace that
felt comfortable,” said Erdos. “I found I was then able
to come back at Guy, and start to catch him again. If I
hadn’t been suffering with that understeer I could have
been so much quicker.” Proof that the conditions were getting
more difficult came on lap 26, when Collard spun in the
leading Pescarolo, followed shortly afterwards by Leroch
in the #35 Courage. It was a bit early to be a scheduled
stop, perhaps, but Guy Smith must have been struggling to
maintain his breakneck pace, and was first amongst the leading
contenders in LMP2 to head for the pitlane – although not
before he’d passed Barbosa in the #8 Dallara. Relieved,
no doubt, to be fitted with full wets, Smith re-emerged
eleventh overall, with Erdos once again the LMP2 leader
in 6th.
It
was not long before the rest of the prototypes started to
make their pitstops for fuel and tyres – some for drivers
too. Conditions were worsening by the moment, and there
were spins a-plenty all around the track, including an unpleasant-looking
whack into the barriers for the #26 Lucchini. Erdos had
been forced to ease back, and his lap-times were now around
2:10, although still consistently among the quickest in
LMP2. With the Lucchini stranded, it soon became clear that
the safety car would have to be deployed, and that was the
moment Phil Barker, team manager at RML, took to call in
Erdos for his first pitstop. He was lying fifth overall.
“We had to change tyres at the first pitstop, which cost
us a bit of time, but the fronts were very badly worn. Before
the race we’d hoped to double stint, but with the understeer
they suffered,” said Erdos. Return to top
Second Hour
It
was good timing, however. The only car that crept through
ahead of him before the Audi coupé called the runners into
line was Vosse in the #36 Belmondo, who briefly lead LMP2
as a result. Erdos got back out on track just behind the
safety car, and became the leader of the pack, with Smith
just three cars behind. Right at the back, and gifted a
full lap’s lead because of it, was Nicolas Minassian in
the #7 DBA. It didn’t look right, and almost certainly wasn’t.
In the end it didn’t matter too much, but if the final result
had been different, I’m sure there’d have been more complaints.
It
took five laps to clear the track and allow racing to resume,
although one or two cars managed to spin even before the
green flags were waved! Conditions were clearly not improving,
but they seemed to suit Smith. Two laps after the restart
he was through into the lead of LMP2 once again, passing
Erdos into that favoured Turn 12. Pure straight line speed
does it again. “He came past me on the back straight,” admitted
Erdos. “The speed differential was amazing. Quite unbelievable.
There was simply nothing I could do about it.” Claude-Yves
Gosselin, having taken over from Vosse, was now in third
place, tenth overall, but not averse to some cross-country
excursions. These and other misadventures would eventually
drop the second Belmondo Courage from contention, and with
it any chance of the title.
Effectively leading the
field, Smith and Erdos had the clearest view of the track
ahead, and were even able to maintain a gap over the chasing
Stephane Ortelli in the R8 Audi, effectively 2nd overall
but with almost a full lap’s deficit on Minassian. Smith’s
lead stabilised after a while at some three seconds, but
narrowed again significantly when Gosselin spun a second
time, this time directly in front of Smith. The Chamberlain
driver had to employ the full width of the generous run-off
area to avoid the gyrating Frenchman, and was lucky not
to be collected in the process. The two LMP2 leaders started
lap 43 (their 42nd) with less than half a second between
them – until Erdos suffered a similar fate, thanks to a
white GT2 Porsche through 12, and fell back nearly three
seconds.
Throughout the field, prototypes
and GT cars were finding the traffic tough going. Part blinded
by the spray and poor visibility, forced off line by puddles
of standing water, aquaplaning wildly, and frequently having
to take avoiding action to miss others less fortunate than
themselves, it was a nightmare. Sometimes it simply didn’t
work out. Jean-Francois Leroche was the innocent recipient
of a hefty tap from Andrew Kirkaldy, the Scot looking for
a way past the G-Force Courage at Turn 12. He, like others
in GT2, was finding that less torque could be an advantage,
and the 360 Ferrari was moving towards the lead in GT2.
Two laps later he appeared to try the same move on Ortelli
through 14; the Audi driver subsequently losing second to
Jean-Christophe Bouillion down the main straight. In such
manner are races won and lost.
In
LMP2, the order appeared more settled. Smith had managed
to find sufficient gaps in the traffic to have eased out
a lead of about seven seconds over Erdos, but it wasn’t
growing to any significant degree. They were running eighth
and ninth overall. Leading the race was Minassian by nearly
a full lap from Bouillion, then Ortelli narrowly third ahead
of Sam Hancock in the Jota Zytek. Fifth was the works Zytek,
followed by the two Rollcentre Dallaras in sixth and seventh.
The #89 Porsche was the next to go off, just as Hancock
got the better of Ortelli, but was it under yellows? In
the end it didn’t matter, although the driver of the #89
might have been wise to wait until the towing strap was
unhitched from the back of his Porsche before he drove off!
Visions of that classic scene in American Graffiti were
thankfully not repeated.
With fifty-odd laps completed
the second round of pitstops began. Among the first to stop
were the two Rollcentre cars, elevating Smith and Erdos
to sixth and seventh. This left Erdos as the MG in a Hancock-Ortelli
sandwich; the leading LMP1 cars coming through to lap the
front-runners in LMP2 for the second time. The traffic did
not work kindly for the gentlemanly Erdos, who saw the gap
to Smith drawn out to nearly fourteen seconds. Return to top
Third Hour
At
the end of the 58th lap both Guy Smith and Thomas Erdos
made their second visits to the pitlane. Smith’s pause was
brief – just long enough to take on fuel and fresh tyres.
The RML pitstop was longer, as Erdos climbed out and Mike
Newton stepped into the cockpit. A problem with a tyre added
to the delay, and by the time Newton was heading away towards
Turn 1, Guy Smith had gained the best part of a lap.
Despite this, Newton was
still lying second in class, although he’d dropped to eighth
overall. He set off in dogged pursuit, and was soon up to
a pace that allowed him to consolidate the team’s hold on
second, although Smith’s lead in the Chamberlain Lola extended
steadily. The yellow car was simply flying, picking off
Gregor Fisken in the Jota Zytek on lap 77 to take fifth
overall. By comparison Newton might have appeared slow,
since his times were as much as eight or ten seconds off
Smith’s pace, but closer examination merely highlighted
how quick Smith was travelling. Mike Newton was actually
matching the pace of Martin Short in the LMP1 #8 Dallara
just ahead of him, and was doing well in trying conditions.
With the exception of Michael Vergers, back in the #32 Courage
and up to third in class, most of the rest of the field
was falling back on the MG. The young Turkish driver Cemil
Cipa, sharing the #37 Belmondo Courage for the weekend,
was the next to suffer. He appeared to lose control down
the straight, and then clip the barriers with the front
right corner of the car, losing the entire lighting pod
in the process. The car was already running last, but would
now return to the garage once more. Return to top
Fourth Hour
Not long afterwards the
rain began to ease slightly, and Newton’s lap times improved
accordingly. His consistency was exemplary, with almost
every lap identical, and pitched evenly around the 2:05
mark. At about the same time, Guy Smith overtook Jean-Denis
Deletrez in the #7 Creation DBA for 4th overall, comfortably
leading LMP2. Mike, in second, was eighth overall, with
Vergers tenth, the Horag Lista Lola eleventh, and the #36
Belmondo a distant 14th, yet 5th in LMP2. Vergers had been
gaining on Newton, narrowing the margin to 45 seconds despite
the MG’s increasing speed, but the Dutch driver then blotted
his otherwise excellent copybook by heading off into the
gravel at Turn 10 on lap 92 and throwing away his gains.
The third round of pitstops
was now under way, and Mike made his first on the car’s
89th lap, the leader’s 93rd. It was a quicker stop this
time, thanks mainly to the lack of driver change and the
fact that the team elected not to change the tyres. A second
spin for Vergers, this time leaving him stranded across
the kerbs, allowed the Horag Lista Lola through into third
place, before it too made its next scheduled stop. Three
laps later Guy Smith finally drew the line on an admirable
opening stint of three hours and nearly twenty minutes,
handing over responsibility for the yellow Lola to Gareth
Evans. At first the two drivers; Newton and Evans, looked
to be evenly matched, with Newton’s if anything the quicker.
Inside ten laps, however, that situation had reversed dramatically.
The combination of increasingly heavy rain once again, and
the double-stinted tyres, was starting to have an affect.
This was the next movement in the ballet sequence, and cars
were pirouetting off the track in almost every direction.
The #36b Belmondo performed a series of 360s in quick succession,
narrowly missing Mike Newton on one occasion. “I could have
done much more damage than this, but it was all my fault!”
conceded Karim Ojeh. Then, roughly 100 laps into the race,
Mike too had his first spin. A few more slow laps, and another
spin later, and the MG was back down the pitlane, this time
an unscheduled stop for fresh tyres. “That was the scariest
time I’ve ever had in a race car! I just had to look at
some standing water and the car aquaplaned!” he said. “I
was taking the kink at very low speed, without using the
throttle, and even then the car spun right round on its
axis – twice! The first time I had to restart the car from
the apron. Luckily they have good run-off areas here. The
second time I tried to restart while I was still spinning.
It worked, and I ended up facing the right way too. When
you’re wheelspinning at 140 miles an hour and being out-dragged
by GT2 Porsches, you know it’s time to come in. Perhaps
not changing the tyres during the first pitstop was a mistake!”
Return to top
Fifth Hour
Almost immediately Mike’s
times started to fall again. It took a few laps to get going
again, but soon enough he was back into a more realistic
rhythm. “With new tyres the car was back to how it had been
at the start of my stint. It took two or three laps for
me to get my confidence back. I’d had two horrible spins
along the back straight, and I’d been waiting for the sound
of an expensive crump each time, but luckily it never came.”
On the MG’s 115th lap Newton dipped back under 2:10 for
the first time in ages, clocking 2:09.594. Evans, by comparison,
was setting times in the 2:11s, and the gap was starting
to narrow, albeit painfully slowly for the team keeping
tabs on the monitors. Michael Vergers, however, had dragged
the #32 Courage back into contention, and was a mere 20
seconds behind Newton and gaining rapidly. On lap 123, when
Newton came down the pitlane to hand the car back to Erdos,
Vergers swept through to take second. There’s no doubting
that Newton was glad to be out of the car. “There are times
each lap when you know you’re no longer in control of the
car. There’s simply no grip whatsoever. It even happens
in a straight line – so you can’t use the accelerator or
the brakes, you just have to balance the throttle and hope
it comes back to you. That’s frightening,” he said. “I also
don’t think I’ve been so cold and wet for a very long time.
When I got out of the car every muscle felt cramped.” Thankfully
the water problem wasn’t as bad as it had been at Silverstone
for Round Three. Since then the team has modified the cockpit
on the MG Lola, and incorporated some vanes that deflect
the water away from the driver.
Vergers enjoyed his elevation
only briefly, and fifteen minutes later the Barazi car had
also pitted, and dropped back down the order. Evans, still
at the wheel of the Chamberlain Lola, was lying 6th overall,
but with Erdos back in the MG, things were about to change.
With fresh tyres and boundless energy, the Brazilian was
upping the pace. While everyone else in the class was struggling
to get under 2:10, Erdos was doing two-minute laps or quicker,
but had the mountain of a two lap deficit to make up. Behind
him, the Horag Lista Lola was back up to third, but a lap
down.
On
133, having completed his hour, Evans made his pitstop and
handed over the Chamberlain Lola to Peter Owen. It wasn’t
a slow pitstop, but it was still time enough for Erdos to
claw back one of the two laps. Owen completed a cautious
out-lap, but was then seen to gun it down the main straight.
“That’ll end in tears,” observed one wag on the pitwall.
It did. Entering Turn 1, the rear end snapped away quickly,
and the unfortunate Owen was sent spinning across the kerbs
and into the gravel. “I’ve had better days in the office,”
said Hugh Chamberlain, “but it happens, unfortunately. He
can’t restart the car, or get out of the gravel. No damage,
apparently, but he can’t seem to get going again.” He did,
of course, but by then Erdos was just seconds behind. The
time on the clock was 15:22, and Erdos had just lapped the
track in 1:59.312. He was fastest LMP2 by some margin. Return to top
Final Hour
Gaining at the rate of
some fifteen seconds each lap, Erdos made short shrift of
catching and passing Owen. Once back into the class lead,
seventh overall, he started to build up a significant advantage,
moving away at a similar rate. Didier Theys, about to hand
over the Horag Lista Lola to Thed Bjork, was also closing
on Owen, although not quite so quickly. Even so, it was
looking likely that the Swiss car would catch, and pass,
the yellow Lola. “It’s looking very tight,” said Phil Barker.
“It’s rather fortunate that Peter had that moment, but that’s
part and parcel of the game, but we’re not counting chickens.
Tommy’s doing a great job in very difficult circumstances,
and we’ve one more stop to do.” That stop came on Tommy’s
146th lap, with fuel and fresh tyres for the MG. A quick
stall – even the best make mistakes! - and he was away!
Moment later Owen too pitted, handing over the #39 Chamberlain
car to Guy Smith for the final thirty-five minutes. In the
process, Thed Bjork whistled by along the main straight
and into second place.
At
this point Thomas Erdos had a thirty second lead over Bjork,
who appeared to have an insurmountable 90 seconds on Smith.
With all three lapping within a couple of seconds of one
another - Erdos and Smith doing one fifty-nines to Bjork's
two oh-ones, it started to look as if the die had been cast.
What wasn’t obvious was the state of the weather, and just
a few minutes round the proverbial corner the rain clouds
were gathering. For fifteen minutes the three raced on;
the gap between first and third more or less constant, but
the position of Bjork in the middle swinging inexorably
towards Smith. It still stood at over a minute on lap 155,
but next time around it all started to go wrong for Bjork
– and also, therefore, for Mike and Tommy. Five laps previously
Bjork had set the #27 Lola’s fastest lap of the race at
1:58.094. Now he was spinning wildly out of control, his
confidence sapped, and his times languishing in the middle
twenties. The rain had returned with a vengeance, and with
it came darkness. The last twenty minutes were raced under
night-time conditions. Return to top
Finish
This didn’t seem to deter
Smith, who managed to unlap himself once on Erdos towards
the end of lap 160. “The car was good again on fresh tyres,
but half way through the stint they started to go off, so
I had to nurse them a little after that,” said Erdos. Bjork
promptly spun again, regained the track, and then did it
again. Elsewhere, Vanina Ickx was spinning too, narrowly
missing Tommy, who appeared lucky not to collect her Dallara
Dervish in the process. Although now lapping faster than
Guy Smith, Erdos seemed to be acting like a magnet to out
of control prototypes. The Barazi Courage was next. Then,
with ten minutes to go, Bjork spun again, and this was the
occasion for Smith to sail serenely past and into second
place. “The team were able to keep me informed, and they
told me what was going on. When they told me the Lista car
had a problem, I knew the race was now out of my control,”
conceded Erdos. Second was all Chamberlain needed. With
those points in the bag, Gareth Evans was assured the title
of 2005 LMES LMP2 Champion. With the conditions growing
increasingly more dangerous, everyone eased off over the
last two or three laps, enabling Erdos to take the chequered
flag with 40 seconds in hand over Guy Smith, with Bjork
a distant third. It was a clean sweep of podium steps for
Lola in the season’s last race, and a win, at last, for
Mike Newton and Thomas Erdos.
Whilst undeniably delighted
to have clinched victory, there was also a hint of disappointment,
quite understandably, in the RML garage. To have come so
close, and then to have missed the prize by a single point,
only serves to drag out even more of the ‘if onlys’. “I’m
happy to have won the race. It’s something we’ve been chasing
all year,” said Thomas Erdos. “It’s a great way to end the
championship, but with ten minutes to go I did think that
perhaps we might have got the championship as well. Mind
you, for those last ten to fifteen laps we weren’t racing
at all. We were just trying to stay on the track. It was
really dangerous.” His co-driver agreed. “Yes, they should
have stopped the race . . . with 12 minutes to go!” said
Newton. Phil Barker agreed with his drivers. “We’re disappointed
to miss the championship, of course, but pleased to get
our first championship win. The guys drove awesome today.
The conditions were so difficult, it was unreal, but the
car ran faultlessly, and under these conditions, it proves
that all the work we’ve done has worked. We didn’t have
a bean of trouble. We did our bit, the drivers did theirs,
and finally we managed to get the win. It’s just that a
fourth, three thirds and a win wasn’t enough for the championship,
and Chamberlain are worthy winners. They had their car sorted
right from the start, and Guy Smith was awesome today. I
take my hat off to him. He won the title for Evans.”
RML has worked all year
to create a car that is not only quick and handles well,
but is also reliable. They now seem to have achieved that,
and can look forward to next season with added confidence.
“Even if other strong cars come into the championship, we
still believe we can win next season,” said Mike Newton.
“We’ve had a year to get the car reliable, and there have
been no repeats of the problems we’ve had, so now we’re
well positioned for next season. There are still two things
we’ve got to address, however. The car is too heavy, and
so is one of the drivers!” We don’t think he was referring
to Thomas Erdos! Return to top
Marcus Potts
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