Thomas Erdos endured an enormously frustrating first outing of the 2006 Season in Round 1 of the Le Mans Endurance Series from Istanbul Park in Turkey. After the encouragement of a faultless test at Paul Ricard a fortnight before, and then two days of excellent free practice, the weekend looked to be heading in the right direction when Tommy claimed class pole in qualifying. Sadly, he was never to be allowed to capitalise on this excellent foundation when his RML MG Lola EX264 was unceremoniously tipped into the pitwall by a chasing LMP1 driver - even before he'd crossed the starting line. This is his account of a difficult race . . .

Having completed two days of successful testing at Paul Ricard, we arrived in Istanbul full of confidence that we had a reliable car for our first event of 2006. The question was, were we going to be fast enough? Qualifying on Saturday answered that one: fourth overall - second row on the grid - was a nice place to be, and we were very confident of a good result come Sunday.

We had been third overall for most of the qualifying session until Jan Lammers' Dome went a tenth or so quicker in the dying moments. Even so, it was our first pole position with the AER engine, and a great way to start our new partnership with them. Pole for our first race of the season . . .well, I could not have asked for better.We had a very good opportunity in Istanbul to try and score valuable points without the challenge of the LMP2 Synergy car being there. We know they will be very strong competitors from Spa onwards, so it was important we scored as highly as possible to give us a cushion for the rest of the season.