A month after retiring
from Round 1 of the 2009 Le Mans Series in Barcelona with
engine problems, Thomas Erdos and co-driver Mike Newton
were forced to pull out of Round 2 at Spa when a second
engine failed to go the distance. Just as he had in Barcelona,
Thomas Erdos drove a faultless first stint, and worked
through to be running third in class from a pitlane start
in under half an hour. There appeared to be every chance
of challenging for a podium finish until, eight minutes
into Mike Newton’s mid-race stint, the engine died.
The retirement came at the end of
an arduous three days for Wellingborough-based RML. Tommy
had been fastest in class by the end of Friday free practice,
and the prospects had looked excellent, but a first-lap
accident for Mike Newton during Saturday morning's practice
run left the team with extensive repairs to complete and
no chance of participating in qualifying.
This meant starting the race from
the pitlane, but having been penalised ten positions on
the grid for replacing the blown engine after Barcelona,
starting the race from the back of the field hardly mattered.
However, when thick fog forced the abandonment of official
warm-up on Sunday morning, the drivers faced a six-hour
race in a car that hadn’t turned a wheel since a
ground-up rebuild. It was testament to the skill and meticulous
work of the RML mechanics that the car was on the button
from the moment the lights turned green.
One car spinning off on the warm-up
lap, followed by a first-corner incident, brought out
the safety car and allowed Tommy to catch up on the tail-enders
before the restart. He then sliced through the 50-car
field, taking half of them inside five laps and reaching
third in LMP2 within half an hour. “The car was
just such a delight to drive,” said Erdos. “It
was handling perfectly, and even though I didn’t
have the top-end speed of some of the others, it felt
strong, and I could challenge. It’s just amazing
what the team did, rebuilding the car completely in an
afternoon, and then to have it perform so well without
any time to test it was remarkable.”
Early in his second stint Tommy
caught a patch of oil at Rivage and took to the gravel,
but he and the team recovered well from that, and the
Brazilian went on to set the car’s fastest lap just
before handing over to Mike Newton. The CEO of AD Group
would manage a mere four laps before the engine let go
on the run up towards Les Combes. “We’re so
disappointed for the guys that our race ended this way,”
said a disconsolate Thomas Erdos. “After all their
efforts, they deserved so much better than this.”
The depth of RML’s disappointment
and frustration is emphasised by the undeniable potential
of the team’s Lola Mazda Coupé. Setting fastest
lap in free practice on Friday and battling through to
third in class from the back of the field confirms that
the car has the pace, but so far the engine reliability
that brought two class wins at Le Mans in 2005 and 2006
eludes RML in 2009.
The team plans to introduce
a series of additional track tests before heading for
the Le Mans 24 Hours in June, and has little over four
weeks to seek a way through the problem.
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