Le Mans Endurance Series
Peninsula / DeWalt / Racesports TVR At Silverstone
The collective decision by John Hartshorne, Graeme Mundy, Richard Stanton and Dennis Leech to contest the four LMES races with the Peninsula-backed TVR this year has, three races into the season, proven to be a very good one. Disappointment at Monza in May – the car was damaged by a lump of flying rubber – has been offset by points finishes at the Nurburgring in July, and now Silverstone on August 14th.
The rubber that littered the track hit other cars this time, allowing the three drivers a relatively smooth passage through the 1000 kilometres. It wasn’t without incident though – and the car wasn’t quite as quick as the drivers had expected.
John Hartshorne: “The ACO officials had allowed us to run with the original diffuser at Monza and the Nurburgring, but they insisted we changed it for a less effective one for the third race. That meant we were struggling for rear end grip: we just didn’t have the downforce that we’ve been used to.”
That meant a slower time in qualifying than the drivers would have liked, but it didn’t alter their race strategy. The aim was to keep plugging away, and keep delays in the pits to a minimum. It worked very well.
Graeme Mundy started the race, but “I came in early because the tyres were absolutely shot. We lost two laps during the pit stop because a wheel nut was jamming.”
4 minutes and 38 seconds were lost at that first stop, the two laps the delay cost dropping them almost to the back of the GT Class – although the fancied Freisinger Porsche was behind them at this stage, the 911 having already needed a new power steering pump.
John Hartshorne was next in, and set a good pace, matching Graeme Mundy’s typical 2:01 / 2:02 laps – but it wasn’t as long a stint as he was expecting: "There was a lot of muck on the track, and as I came round Luffield, the left rear started banging, and I thought it was pick-up on the tyre, but at Woodcote it got worse, but I'd missed the pit lane, so I crawled round for an entire lap. The wheel nut had come loose, so I pitted earlier than expected.”
Rubber pick up was a very good ‘guess’ at the problem, because the track was becoming littered with rubber debris, and getting some of that stuck to a hot, sticky Dunlop can cause all sorts of vibration and handling issues.
“We planned to do four stints of 90 minutes each, but the plan changed to four stops, and five stints," explained a hot Hartshorne after his drive. His stint was 29 laps, nine shorter than the opening one.
That slow lap with the loose wheel had cost another minute, but Richard Stanton took over with no further wheelnut problems. He promptly set the car’s best lap of the race, a 1:59.871, and completed a long stint, as per the original plan. He pitted after 42 laps, a very economical run, the car still having seven litres of fuel left in the tank – just about the perfect margin.
The Peninsula-backed TVR had now covered 109 laps, but suffered that sticking wheelnut again, as Graeme Mundy took over for his second stint.
“My second set of tyres were great,” he commented later. “What at first was very difficult to drive turned into a very nice race car."
He proved it by covering 38 laps, leaving John Hartshorne a short run home to the flag – and a very rewarding seventh in class, only one place behind the highly modified TVR of the Chamberlain-Synergy TVR team, driven by a pair of ex-MG Le Mans drivers.
There were also some significant ‘scalps’ further down the results sheet, several of the GT teams having had nightmare races involving, for example, engine failure, clutch failure – and for one team, a five minute penalty for overtaking in the pit lane. Meanwhile, the TVR Tuscan T-400R just ran and ran. Well done Dennis Leech and the Racesports crew.
I wish I could have made the race, but I was busy hooning the Griff' around Goodwood in the TVRCC Speed Champs.
Congratulations to the team, and thanks for keeping the "DIGBITS" logo - OK, so we could only afford a very modestly-sized space on the car - to the fore!
Thanks,
Marcus
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