RML
AD Group has endured the most difficult season in a seven-year
sportscar racing programme, but 2009 has ended on a high
after Thomas Erdos, Mike Newton and the team’s Lola
Mazda recorded a long overdue podium in the final round
of the Le Mans Series at Silverstone.
Having
gone the distance in just a single race before the weekend,
the team took the brave decision to install a revised
version of the AER-designed Mazda engine for the season-closing
round at Silverstone. With the emphasis on reliability,
the team concentrated on set-up and handling, and the
RML Lola Mazda emerged second quickest in the weekend’s
first day of practice. Tommy Erdos then qualified third
for Sunday’s 1000 Kilometres, although the organisers’
response to the fitting of a new engine since the previous
race at the Nürburgring was to impose a ten-place
grid penalty.
Lining
up on the eleventh row for the six-hour race, Thomas Erdos
made an emphatic start, slicing through from 21st position
to reach 12th overall and second in the LMP2 class within
the first hour. It was a position he handed over to Mike
Newton for the middle hours of the race, and the CEO of
AD Group made the most of what would be his longest race
stint of the season to consolidate the team’s grip
on the podium. For the final two hours Thomas Erdos built
on that foundation to establish a two-lap margin over
third place that never looked challenged.
“It’s
such a relief to be back on the podium again,” said
Thomas Erdos. “We’ve been chasing this all
year, and we’ve always had the pace, but never the
reliability. Our emphasis today was on going the distance,
so the engine wasn’t producing all the power it
should be capable of. That meant we couldn’t match
the Speedy [Team Sebah] car on pace alone, but we proved
that it was a wise decision to try this version of the
engine. A podium is a great reward for all the hard work
the team has put in to this season, and to clinch second
is just the icing on the cake.”
Ray
Mallock, founder of RML, was in attendance. “With
my commitments to the World Touring Car Championship,
this has been my first opportunity to be at a Le Mans
Series race this year, but it’s been the right one.
At last we have a good result to end what has been a very
disappointing season for Phil Barker [Team Manager] and
the rest of the team. Today, the engine has run like clockwork,
and the question now is, what might have happened if we’d
had this kind of reliability all the way through the year?
It’s a very positive way to end the season.”
Pauline
Norstrom, Director of Worldwide Marketing for AD Group,
was “absolutely ecstatic! I’d almost forgotten
what it felt like to see Mike and Tommy on a podium, but
this is the result the team has deserved all year. We
didn’t want to believe it until we saw the car cross
the line, but I’m delighted for the drivers, and
I’m on cloud nine for the rest of the team.”
The
one person who has borne the brunt of the year’s
disappointment has been Mike Newton. On so many occasions
this season the engine has failed within minutes of his
taking over the car, but the final Le Mans Series weekend
saw Mike complete more time on track than he’s managed
in the whole of the rest of the year combined. “A
win would have been too much of a fairytale,” he
conceded, “but this is where we should have been
all season, and it feels great!”
Over
the coming months the team will be working with partners
AER and Mazda to refine the two-litre turbocharged engine
to achieve a unit that is not only reliable, but with
the power to bring more rewards to a team that won the
LMP2 Le Mans Series title in 2007, and has taken the class
twice in the Le Mans 24 Hours.
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