LMES - Spa 1000 Kilometers
Day 3 – Raceday

A day of mixed emotions for the RML MG squad – the positive highs of leading the class, and being one of the fastest cars on track, mixed with the disappointing lows of being thwarted by one of those irritating electrical gremlins that can be so hard to trace.

Sunday had started with a very questionable warm-up session – questionable in as much as there were doubts about whether it should have been staged at all. Spa has thrown just about everything at the drivers this past weekend, save snow and hail, and Sunday’s offering was a thick blanket of fog. Visibility was reduced to less than 100 metres, with the stretch through Les Combes and Rivage among the worst. It was, in Mike Newton’s opinion, “unsafe”, and few would have disagreed with him.

“How can you let 40-odd cars out onto the track when the drivers can’t see fifty yards ahead of them?” asked Thomas Erdos. “If anyone was to lose it on the straight, you’d just drive straight into them.” Mike was equally concerned. “Visibility was so poor you couldn’t see from one marshals’ post to the next. Any accident could have been disastrous.”

Unsurprisingly, all drivers were taking it gently, and times were rendered meaningless. Thomas Erdos completed three laps in the RML MG Lola before heading for the pitlane, where visibility was at least good enough for the team to simulate a driver change. “We addressed some issues with the belts,” explained Erdos. “It went well, so I guess that was one useful thing to come out of the warm-up.” Mike Newton completed the twenty-minute session.

As the day progressed the situation failed to improve. The one-hour Belcar race went ahead as scheduled, but the safety car was much in evidence. The British Formula 3 race was cancelled – no headlights, no wheelarches and poor visibility being cited as reasons. That left some doubt over how the LMES race would be started, and ten laps under the safety car was the original plan. It sounded sensible, and with visibility at Les Combes down to 40 metres, wholly justified. Strange, then, that conventional procedure was followed to the letter, and racing began after a single parade lap behind the pace car.

With an eye to improving track conditions, Tommy had started the race on intermediate tyres; one of only five drivers to do so. “They took a very long time to come in,” he explained. “I had to cope with massive understeer for the first few laps, and that was made worse by the track being so cold, but there was a dry line starting to show, and I was confident the decision would work in my favour - eventually.” Initially, however, it did not, and Vincent Vosse, starting the #36 Belmondo Courage, was able to nip ahead on the very first lap. “He was on full wets,” continued Erdos, “so I knew he’d be able to do that, but I was also confident that the inters would pay off, and I’d soon catch him again.” True to his word, twenty minutes into the race Erdos swept back into the lead of LMP2. Moments later Vosse spun the Courage at the entry to Les Combes, and Erdos had the breathing space he needed.

It had been a challenging half hour in other respects, with observers noting that the MG Lola was just about the only car not running with headlights ablaze. “Oh, the switch was on!” insisted Erdos, “but they just weren’t working. I had some problems early on, with no radio and no lights, but they suddenly re-set themselves, and they were OK after that.” What wasn’t OK, however, was another unrelated but more significant electrical problem. “I had at least twelve total cut-outs,” admitted the Brazilian. “Some lasted just a fraction of a second, others were far longer, and they were happening anywhere and everywhere – in the middle of a corner, down a straight, wherever.”

This was all to come to a head a little later on, but as the race neared the end of its first hour Erdos and the distinctive RML MG peaked at fourth overall, leading LMP2 by over half a minute from the other Lola, the Chamberlain-Synergy AER-powered machine. It all looked very promising as the MG Lola came in for his first scheduled pitstop for fuel and tyres. “We had a comfortable lead, and that was so encouraging,” said Erdos, pleased to have been mixing it so strongly with the LMP1 runners. He rejoined in tenth overall, just ahead of the second Belmondo Courage.

The second hour began much as the first had ended, but fifteen minutes in there was a major incident at Les Combes, with four cars involved in a serious accident. The safety car was deployed, and with significant damage to the barriers it would be nearly forty minutes before racing resumed.

Throughout that time Erdos was stuck two cars back in the train of vehicles, while the fog, which had started to clear, began to thicken once again. Immediately ahead of him in the train was the #73 Ice Pol Gordon Racing Porsche, one of the slowest cars in the field. Our sympathies go out to the driver, who must have been aware that, on the restart, he would be heading the entire field down the hill towards Eau Rouge, with nowhere to hide.

Racing resumed at two o’clock, and Erdos was quickly up to racing speed once more. He laid down a succession of quick laps, including his best of the race so far, but on the very next lap coasted to a halt near Blanchimont. “I had no power, no electrics, nothing,” he said. “The car was totally dead! The marshals pushed me onto the apron on the outside of the corner, and I started looking for the problem. I knew it must be electrical, so I just started banging all the connections and the relay cover, and checking the wires.” This was broadcast live on television, and his frustration was evident. “I was about to give up, tried one more knock, and suddenly it all came back on again! I couldn’t believe it. I jumped back in and drove straight to the pits.”

He sat in the car for some time as the mechanics delved into the depths of the “passenger” side of the car. It looked as though it would be a lengthy stop, and the car was rapidly falling down the order. It was half past two. “The master relay was cutting out,” explained Phil Barker. “Each time it did that it was turning off the master switch, and all the electrics. After Tommy stopped, we believe it cooled down enough to allow the relay to reset, and then he was able to drive back to the pits.” Elsewhere a second major incident, this time involving the #98 Porsche, brought out the safety car once again, and that probably saved the RML MG a few laps, but it was another ten minutes before the car rejoined the track.

In the interim Mike Newton had swapped places with the Brazilian, and when racing resumed once again at five to three, the start of the fourth hour confirmed the CEO of Dedicated Micros to be lying 30th overall.

The car had lost eight laps during the enforced pitstop, but now appeared to be behaving itself. For half an hour he pressed on strongly, and then, with the track conditions starting to improve, the decision was taken to bring Mike in and make the swap to slick tyres. The change-over completed, Newton attempted to restart the car, but the electrics were having none of it. The crossed-hands signal from the driver said it all. “The temporary fix we’d done when Tommy had his earlier problem failed,” said Phil Barker. “When Mike attempted to restart the car, it burnt out the fix we’d made, so we had to refit another cable.”

The fresh tyres were removed once more and returned to the warming tent, while the engineers prodded and poked around with the electrics. A new battery was fitted, and various other tweaks were completed, before the thumbs up came from Newton, and with the tyres re-fitted, he was away once more. For the remainder of his stint the car behaved impeccably, although Mike did have an encounter with a slower car on the run down towards the Bus Stop. The commentators suggested it was a Porsche, Mike insists it was a Ferrari. “He blocked me very late through Blanchimont, and having backed off I was out of position for the entry to the Bus Stop. I caught a damp patch, and with slicks there wasn’t a lot I could do. I slid gently into the side. It wasn’t a serious impact, and there was no damage done, so no problem. If he’d not baulked me I’d have been passed him already, so I guess it was 50/50.”

Ten minutes later, at just after half four, Newton pitted for the last time. It was slightly ahead of schedule, thanks to a slow puncture to the left rear. Although clearly unrelated to the Bus Stop incident, with so many incidents elsewhere around the circuit, debris was the likely cause. Newton handed the MG Lola back to Thomas Erdos for the final period, having completed a highly creditable stint. “Mike drove really well,” said an impressed Phil Barker. “He was matching or bettering the pace of all the other runners in the class, and didn’t give away any time to them at all. It was an excellent performance.” Mike was equally pleased. “With that fresh set of slicks, the car felt fantastic, and the tyres were wonderful! I was pleased to be lapping as quick as anyone in LMP2, and not dissimilar to many of those in LMP1. Great!”

Another safety car period began almost as soon as Tommy Erdos emerged from the pitlane, but he was able to make up places despite this, as cars ahead of him took to the pitlane, and he rose through the order to stand 24th overall and fifth in LMP2 as the race entered its final hour. When the safety car pulled aside Erdos began to drive like something possessed. “The track was very slippy. In fact, it felt very odd, and there was no dry line any more. Ideally I would have preferred intermediates, not slicks.”

The surface had been made worse by one of the GT2 Porsches trailing coolant fluid throughout most of its length, and visibility had also deteriorated somewhat. Several drivers were caught out by the conditions, including Gounon in the Oreca Audi, but the RML MG was suddenly the fastest thing on the track. Even the race leader, at that time Jamie Campbell-Walter in the LMP1 Creation DBA, wasn’t immune, and had nothing to give when the red, blue and now not-so-white MG flew by him through Eau Rouge. “The team came through on the radio to say I was running quicker than anyone else in the race. I couldn’t believe it!” exclaimed an incredulous Erdos. Fourth in class, at that stage held by the #46 Lucchini, looked a certainty, with Erdos devouring the Alfa-engined car’s advantage at the rate of over 30 seconds per lap. “I just kept pushing, pushing,” he said. True enough, with fifteen minutes of the race remaining, the MG swept through to take the place. Was a podium possible? Pure mathematics suggested it wasn’t, since the #20 Pilbeam was several laps ahead, but the race had already seen nearly twenty retirements, and under Spa conditions, almost anything was possible.

Erdos pressed on relentlessly, taking more than 20 seconds out of the margin with each lap completed, but with ten minutes to go the fuel warning light started to blink. In the short time since he’d passed the Lucchini, Erdos had already created enough of a buffer for the team to be confident that, while they now knew they couldn’t catch the Pilbeam, they could safely call the Brazilian back in for a precautionary splash-and-dash. “For the last half hour I was trying to conserve fuel,” insisted Erdos. “There was no point in risking failing to finish, and we had time in hand over fifth, and couldn’t realistically catch P3.” Better safe than sorry, they quickly added enough fuel on his penultimate lap to ensure a safe run to the flag.

“Considering all the time we lost to the electrical fault, to regain fourth is very satisfying,” said Phil Barker, evidently pleased by every other aspect of his car’s performance. “It secures some valuable points to take forward into the next round, when we’re confident we’ll have all these problems resolved.” It transpired that the gremlin had first revealed itself during the morning warm-up, but with no way of identifying the source of such an irregular and intermittent fault, the team had been given no alternative but to start the race regardless. “We couldn’t hope to identify the source until it did it again, unfortunately, in the race.”

Mike Newton was beaming from ear to ear, having been assured that he’d set the car’s fastest lap of the race. “I’m absolutely delighted. Despite the electrical problem, we had the pace to win today. Tommy established a good lead, and then I was consistently amongst the quickest drivers in the class for my session as well. I have every confidence that I would have handed the car back in the same position had we not encountered those problems. That’s enormously encouraging for the rest of the season.”

That season takes a sidestep in six week’s time, when the squad heads over to Le Mans for the official test weekend, followed a fortnight later by the 24 Hours.
Marcus Potts