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| Jun.18.2001 THE FINAL RACE OF"24 HEURES DU MANS 2001" | |||
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The final race of "24 heures du Mans 2001" started on June at 16th 16:00 ( 17th at 23:00 in Japan ). The Car No.9 ( J. Lammers / V. Hillbrand / D. Creveles Racing for Holland ) jumped from the 4th grid up to the 2nd place at opening lap however, 15 minutes after the start, the race was in a great confusion with the sudden strong rain at the part of the course. While there were cars that came back to pits or crashed themselves with slippery road, car no. 9 Lammers kept driving with dry tires and once led the race. But rainy weather covered the whole course, so he came back to the pit and changed the tires to the rain set, and returned to the file led slowly by a safety car. Soon after the return, Lammers spun to the guard fence and crashed the tail. He had to come back to the pit again. The area of his crash was not only rear wing, but also reached its wing stay. The team spent nearly 50 minutes to return the car to the course, and lost their position a lot. The other hand, car no.10 ( J. Nielsen / H. Katoh / C. Elgerd Team Den Bla Avis team Goh ) kept their lap pace according to their strategy. They raised up the position steadily, however 5 hours after the start, they stopped the car at Hunaudieres with the trouble of its engine. It could restart and came back to the pit. The trouble was in fuel injectors. They spent a lot of minutes to investigate the cause of trouble. This trouble was seen at qualify session, however they couldn't find out and resolve the problem completely. Finally the car no.10 returned to the course after 1 hour without fundamental solution. Car no.10, which returned to the race, made as fast lap time as the one of the top groups. 6 hours after the race, they came back to the pit with the trouble that they broke the cogs of belt of alternator. They spent a long pit stop again to recover from this trouble, which was also seen at qualify session. Car no. 9 that kept running with troubles of unknown origin came back to the pit with a trouble again. Team started a long operation. At midnight, although Kato went to the course with an unsolved injector trouble, he came back to the pit soon again, and finally team decided to retire the race because they couldn't do any more. "Something is wrong with an electrical system and ECU misfunctions to have its injectors keep opening. This results in the engine stop as the intake is filled with fuel all the time. Also it's dangerous to continue without complete repair. Therefore, finally we decided to retire from the race. We couldn't find out the origin of the error." The designer Akiyoshi Oku explained the situation. After that, car no. 9 that was backward because of the change of the wing started to chase and raised up their position. In fact, they had to change their strategy. Their 2nd driver Cleveles didn't prefer to drive at night under rainy weather. "Night with hard rain scared him since he never had experience to drive the sport car before this." The manager Tadashi Sasaki said. "Then, we had the 2nd driver Hillbrand keep driving for 4 stints. He said that he was good at driving in the rain and did a great job. He drove really fast in the rain and enjoyed himself a lot, so he didn't want to get out of the car in the pit. Car no.9 jumped up the position with Hillebrand's night activity. At the break of dawn, team changed the driver to Cleveles who had a rest during the night session. "Then he was also fast! He chased with extraordinary fast laps and jumped up to the 11th place. We thought that he was too fast to drive safely. While we were discussing whether we needed to tell him something or not, he went out of the course and dropped down the ranking." Tadashi Sasaki said. Actually they lost only 10 minutes with this accident. Cleveles could keep his driving and went up to the 9th place at last. Team was going to change the driver to Lammers, the Ace driver. However at 5:30 before sunrise, car no.9 stopped at Hunaudiere. The problem was in the electrical system. As the car radio didn't reach to the driver at Hunaudiere, team prepared a mobile phone inside the cockpit for an emergency situation. Team talked to Cleveles and tried to find the cause while their support car went to the car and tried to fix the problems. But their situation didn't go well. Although they kept trying to return to the race, finally the team decided to retire, which was 10 hours before the race finish. "Even though Lammers said that the worst was the accident after the start of the race, the troubles were not only the accidents but also some electrical problems that results in the retire from the race or pressure down of the cooling water. Without talking about these troubles, our lap time was not that late from the winner Audi. I will think how we can fix these weak points of S101 that we found out during this race. It is difficult to predict how much we had to prepare for crash or accidents. We also had to be able to change the wing stay within 10 minutes, although we don't usually need such a rapid action in the other race that we usually participate in." Akiyoshi Oku summarized the story of this race. The manager Tadashi Sasaki said. "We have never seen such weather at Le Mans. It looked almost like Spa-Weather. I'm satisfied this time because they could keep the pace as fast as the Audi until 6:00 AM. The weather could be a cause of their retirement. Anyway, the lack of budget, time, and test brought us this result." 24 heures du Mans, held only 3 months after the first running of S101, gave DOME S101 a hard ordeal. However, people certainly could see the great potential of Dome S101 during this race week. Its potential must be developed through continuing severe races. Now Dome S101 will challenge the next race, the 4th round of FIA-SCC on July 1st week at Brno. Makoto Ohgushi |
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