Le Man Legends 2009

Thursday’s 1 hour afternoon test / qualifying session started well with Adrian Willmott posting a time of 5.05 which at the time was the fourth fastest of the sixty plus cars on the grid. With Adrian’s family commitment he only had time to do 4 timed laps as he left to catch a flight as soon as he jumped out the car.

As Tom Alexander was getting into the car Adrian mentioned that there was a ‘massive’ vibration from the car from 80 mph all the way to 160+ mph.

Tom managed to do six laps to familiarise himself with the circuit, as there was no need to push he didn’t better Adrian’s time. Our overall qualification was 7th which was incredible considering the cars that we were racing against are thoroughbred race cars.

Friday was spent checking the car over and trying to diagnose what was giving us the vibration. The conclusion that we came to was that the tyres had spun on the rims making each rear wheel 160grams out of balance. Contributing to the vibration was also warped rear brake discs.

Saturday’s early morning race started with a mock Le Mans start behind the safety car.

As the lights went green to start racing, Tom reacted instantly and managed to be in 4th by the first corner. Chasing 3rd place down into the first chicane he out broke himself and went straight on, rejoining the race in 8th. Our rival DB4GT was now in 6th so Tom set about trying to close the gap. Tom pitted at the end of his three laps to hand the car over to Adrian mentioning that the engine had developed a miss-fire.

Adrian left the pits on the tail of our rivals who had also pitted. With his first lap done behind the safety car, racing resumed. As there was a car in-between both Aston’s, Adrian lost time overtaking it with subsequently gave them a four second lead. The four remaining laps were nail biting as the gap closed to two seconds. As the chequered flag came out the two Aston’s powered past in 6th and us in 7th.

Adrian’s closing lap time was an impressive 5.01.28 which is the fastest lap ever for a DB4GT around the Le Mans circuit.

Investigation later found that one of the rotor arms had broken causing the miss-fire.