The Embassy 45 car crossed the finish line 3rd in class at the year’s final Le Mans Series 1000km race at Silverstone yesterday. Unfortunately, after the chequered flag, the car received a time penalty after it was decided Jonny Kane left the pit lane under a red light, which meant an official finish of 6th.
The Full Story
Both cars arrived for the final round of the Le Mans Series at Silverstone with exactly the same setup as they had raced successfully at the Nurburgring. The decision proved to be the right one, with both cars posting extremely competitive times in Friday’s first free practice. Although everyone’s times in the session were relative to it being first practice, it was still gratifying to know that we could run at the front under the conditions. With the second session a total washout, it was down to Saturday’s free practice to get the car ready for qualifying.
Saturday started damp, but drying and initially free practice three saw times up on the previous day. With under ten minutes left of the session it seemed the track was fully dry and the two Embassy cars got into their stride with car 46 recording 3rd and car 45 posting 4th fastest in class.
It was a fabulous achievement and the team was rightly upbeat, but it seemed that the result may have been more about having the right tyres and a clear lap and not outright comparable speed... because as qualifying got underway, the two Embassy cars could only manage a more realistic 7th and 8th place.
As Team Principal Jonathan France said after qualifying:
“We seemed to have the right tyres at the right time which resulted in us being 3rd and 4th in the final free practice. But as the track stayed dry, the other teams found their settings in qualifying, the pace improved and they left us behind. Losing the second session to rain and then gaining a false impression of our outright pace in the final session meant that our cars were not at their best for the qualifying.”
And with a Sunday morning that did not include a free practice, any changes made would be introduced into the race without being tested, but typically, Jonathan was not disheartened
“Even though we hadn’t carried our free practice form into qualifying I wasn’t too concerned. Typically, we don’t qualify particularly well but we always race well and with the excellent setup and pace we had shown earlier in the weekend, I was confident of making up places and time during the race.”
When the race got underway, Embassy had mixed fortune. The 45 car of Warren and Jonny ran like a dream picking up places with reassuring regularity. The 46 car of Darren and Joey suffered a bearing failure early on and lost over 20 minutes early. From that point, the 46 car was playing catch up and although running well in spells, a number of minor incidents meant that it pretty much held station laps down over the leading LMP2 contenders.Of which the 45 car was certainly one.
Warren and Jonny had performed brilliantly and with the Speedy Lola and Essex Porsche dropping out the 45 car found itself in 2nd place overall. Right about this time the safety car was deployed, and due to backing up Jonny had to bring his car to a complete stop and although he depressed the clutch the car stalled. The clutch had failed. Jonny restarted the car on track with the starter motor and the. It was decided that the problem could be worked around. It simply meant that, unable to get the car started in neutral, the drivers would have to limit stops and start the car in gear when they did need to get going again.
The problem did cause a few regulation stops to take longer than usual as the car jumped down the pit lane trying to start before it returned to the track. Overall though, the damage wasn’t too severe as the 45 car managed to stay in the top three.
With around forty five minutes of the race remaining, Jonny entered the pit lane for his final regulation stop when a different incident led to another safety car. As the Embassy driver was getting set to rejoin the race, the safety car snake passed the start of the pit lane and according to regulation the pit lane was automatically closed. Having already started the car on the starter motor, Jonny was crawling towards the pit lane exit staring down the barrel of a red light. Unfortunately, without the option of holding the car in neutral and uncertain as to whether he would be able to restart it on the starter motor again, Jonny made the decision to exit under red and pay the penalty during the race.
Jonny instantly radioed back to the garage to inform the team of the incident who were aware of what had happened. With the team expecting an instant penalty to be incurred they were already preparing to contest it, but communication of the penalty never came and as the move was not designed and did not present any advantage to the 45 car, it appeared the officials had overlooked the issue.
With Embassy seemingly allowed to race as normal the drivers and team got back to the task in hand – racing. The 45 Embassy WF01 crossed the finish line 3rd and the entire team, along with 250 Embassy guests, were celebrating the team’s first podium. That was until, unannounced and without warning, an official handed Jonathan a piece of A4 paper marked Decision Number 9. The decision was to penalise Embassy Racing 45 car with a five minute post race penalty for leaving the pit lane under a red light - over 40 minutes ago. The 45 car didn’t have a sufficient time advantage over 4th or even 5th place and so slipped to 6th.
To say the team were disappointed would be an understatement.
Jonathan had this to say about the penalty decision
“Even though we didn’t actually gain an advantage and only ran the light due to mechanical problems, officials deemed that we had sought to gain an advantage and gave us the five minute penalty. Why we were not informed of this as soon as the incident had happened I don’t know. If we had, we could have reacted accordingly and as oppose to sitting comfortably we would have gone out and approached every lap like it was a qualifying lap to make up the five minute penalty.”
The 46 car of Joey and Darren managed to cross the line in 11th place.
After a good night’s sleep, or perhaps not, Jonathan reflected:
“I maintain that it was a harsh decision as the rules state that the penalty for running a red light is a three minute stop and go which would have worked out better for us, so where the five minutes came from I don’t know.
That being said it was a great effort from the entre team and a great spectacle for our fans and guests at Silverstone on Sunday. Our performance this weekend has shown that this team, the drivers and the cars can run at the front of the LMP2 class and really our 2009 starts now. We will be using this as a platform for next year and will be extremely busy through the winter to launch a more competitive assault on the Le Mans series next year.”
LMP2 Race Classification
1. Van Merksteijn Motorsport VAN MERKSTEIJN - Porsche RS Spyder
2. Horag Racing - Porsche RS Spyder
3. Quifel ASM Team - Lola AER
4. RML - Lola MG
5. Team Essex - Porsche RS Spyder
6. 45 Embassy Racing - WF01 Zytek
7. Trading Performance - Zytek 07S
8. Kruse Schiller Motorsport - Lola Mazda
9. Saulnier Racing - Pescarolo Judd
10. Bruichladdich Radical - Radical AER
