Lemans Legends 2013

We were competing in the Legends 45 minute race as we have done previously in 2007, 2009 and 2011. The drivers were once again Tom Alexander and Adrian Willmott.

Thursday’s practise/qualifying 1 hour session was at 4pm on the Thursday. Tom was driving first but pitted at the end of his opening lap complaining of a big vibration, we decided to change the rear wheels for another pair and sent him on his way. After 6 laps and with a lap time of 5.10.9 we were currently 17th overall, 1^st in class, out of a grid of 58 cars. The vibration at this time was getting worse but Adrian had to do at least 3 laps to qualify.

Adrian’s lap times were good and managed to get down to a 5.00.0 which moved us up to 15^th position. We were about to give Adrian the ‘In’ board at the end of his 3^rd lap as there was only 5 minutes of the session remaining, he then drove up the pit lane before we had chance to. He’d come in early as the throttle had a problem.

We decided to take the car back to our truck and work on it there as there was very restricted room in the Legends paddock. Under investigation we found that the vibration had caused the R/H distributor cap to vibrate loose and fall behind the throttle lever. With the transmition tunnel removed it was clear that the bolts that bolted the prop shaft to the gearbox flange were loose. We replaced the 4 bolts at both ends of the propshaft and replaced the Tunnel. The distributor was removed and rebuilt using new spares that we carry with us, replaced and re-timed. Once I’d studied the data for the session it was disappointing to find that Adrian’s final lap on which the throttle problem occurred he was already 4 seconds faster than his 5.00.0 lap, with only a handful of corners to go.

The race started on Saturday morning at 10am with a rolling start, with a damp track Tom started the race. Keeping it nice and smooth in these tricky conditions and keeping concentration would be difficult but Tom to his credit did just this. Cars were dropping out due to mechanical failures and driver errors. The lap times were increasing as the rain continued, on the 4^th lap Tom pitted and handed the car over to Adrian. With a 1 minute timed stop the driver change was done with lots of time to spare.

Adrian’s stint was quick as usual and as the weather worsened he matched the lap times of the race leaders, His overtaking moved us up from 15^th to 11^th when the race finished.

We won our class again as we did in 2011.

Once back at our workshop we found that the balance weight that was welded to the prop shaft was missing which would be causing the vibration we still had during the race.