Aston Martin Festival, Lemans

Practice

Having received a technical update from Prodrive before the car went out onto track, Tom found he had issues with a ‘sticky throttle’ so pitted straight away. After the data was checked no signs of a throttle issue were present so Tom went back out onto circuit. He again found he was suffering with the same problem. A Prodrive engineer then reversed our update. Tom then back out onto track to get used to the car as he hadn’t driven it in a year. Once he was comfortable with the car, he pitted and gave the car to Adrian who went out. As he was getting comfortable with the car, he suffered a front left blow out in the braking zone of the first chicane on the Mulsanne straight. To save the car from receiving any damage driving back to the pits he parked it in the run off area until the session was finished. Upon checking the car when it had returned we discovered no serious damage. Our fastest lap time was 4.16:61 which put us 6th overall and 3rd in class.

Qualifying

After our problems during the practice session we were optimistic that our qualifying would go better. Tom started the session and felt happy with his laps, pitted and handed over to Adrian then took over and was starting to get up to our expected pace, when he suffered another front left blow out, this time going through the Porsche Curves so was able to pit. But as it happened with just enough time for one more lap we decided to not send him back out as he wouldn’t of had a fast lap. Once the car was returned we checked it over for any damage and the data for any abnormalities. But after finding nothing wrong with the car, we were a bit confused how we had suffered two front left blow outs. After discussing with the Dunlop engineers we decided to reduce the camber we were running on the front tyres. Our fastest lap was 4.17:328 which put us 7th on the grid and 4th in class.

Race

Following two sessions that were cut short we were hoping for some better luck for the race. When we woke up on Saturday morning we were met with rain and a very wet track, this lead to us using a set of Avon wets (we were allowed to use these as we had requested permission before the weekend). Having never used the compound that Avon had updated their wets to we were unsure on how they would react. None the less we were edging to get out onto track and get a chance to race our DBRS9 GT3 round the world famous Circuit Le Sarthe. We started off with Tom in the car who held his own in the very wet conditions. However the lighter GT4 cars were able to get more speed through the corners than us so we did lose a couple of places during his stint. Adrian then took over to see the race to a conclusion. Adrian drove how he normally does and finds time everywhere. He was able to recover our first stint to finish 6th overall and 3rd in class. This was a remarkable achievement for our car as it was running to 2008 spec. whereas the other DBRS9’s were in 2011 spec. so we were under powered compared to these cars. A massive well done to the team for a good result in hard circumstances.

Pictures for this event are in our Gallery section.

In car footage is available to view in our ‘view videos’ section.

 

More information on this event will appear soon.

Check back closer to the event date for an update.

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