Apr
14
Adam Airey has worked at Lola since 1999, designing the successful B2K/40 sports car and Lola F3 cars. He also engineered one of the works MG-Lola LMP675 cars at Le Mans in 2001 and 2002. For 2010, 34 year old Airey will engineer the #12 Rebellion Racing Lola LMP1 challenger in the Le Mans Series and at the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Friday
Friday wasn’t easy for us and I think we got caught out a little because the track was still so green as it had been raining a few days before. We had a new tyre from Michelin that we had selected in freezing temperature from when we were there for the test in March, but in actual fact in first practice we were only 6/10th off the Audi. We were maybe a little too cautious after the first free practice session. In actual fact, it was the circuit that was not working for us. But we worked through, tried a few different things and got the car better and better and better through free practice 1, 2 and 3.
Saturday
We knew there was a potential for a few cars around us to be quite a lot faster than us on the straight and that was a real issue. You can be as fast as you want round the rest of the lap but if you are not fast on the straight, then you are obviously on the back foot, so we knew we had to get a reasonable grid position. We were actually a little disappointed with where we ended up (5th) with and the Lola-Aston surprised us with its pace, as did the Oreca-AIM, but they have done thousands of test miles around Ricard. However, we were confident that the Lola-Rebellion would be faster than ORECA in the race.
In terms of how the engineering team works at the race, generally speaking, it’s my call what we do, when we stop and what we change is my call but I always run it by Hugh and Bart (Hayden – team managers) beforehand. So, for instance we talked about the possibility in the race of changing left side tyres only, because they tended to wear out faster than the right side and we looked at it and decided we actually wouldn’t do it in the end. On Saturday evening we decided to double stint the tyres rather than single stint the left side only. Things like that I always discuss with Bart and Hugh. We also have a great relationship with Stan Hall from Engine Developments Ltd who gives me a back-up calculation when we need to stop for fuel and what fuel filler we are using.
Sunday
The race started in spectacular fashion with the Audi and the Peugeot going head to head. Neel (Jani) was set to pick up the pieces but got pushed off the Mistral by Ayari in the ORECA. After about 40mins Neel pitted with what we thought was just a puncture. We had a good look around the suspension and everything appeared to be in order. There were no bend links, broken rod ends or anything like that, so we changed the tyres and sent him back out but the minute the car drove down the pitlane, it was apparent that the left rear suspension had a problem. So Neel limped round that lap, which cost us even more time.
We got the Lola-Rebellion into the garage and fixed the suspension, put a new tyre on and went out again, intent on making up as much time as we could. It wasn’t finished there though as Neel got a 3 minutes stop and go penalty, as he was deemed to have spun the wheels when he left the pit after we affected the repairs. The pit marshal (who wasn’t an ACO marshal, he was a circuit marshal) based his decision on a black line on the concrete outside the garage and when we measured it, it wasn’t wide enough to be one of our tyre marks. It was actually one of the Formula 3 cars that had been practising there earlier on. So we were given a 3 minutes stop and go penalty, which was obviously very harsh and very frustrating.
As the race went on, the Lola got quicker and quicker relative to the rest of the field and Neel’s last lap was a 1m45.1s and the fastest lap the car did in the race was a 1m45:0s, so it goes to show that the pace was still there right at the end and nobody else was on that kind of pace at the end of the race. Both Neel and Nico (Prost) did a great job all weekend, as did the team who were really impressive on the pit stops.
Looking forward to Spa next month, we are very confident of good result for the Rebellion Racing Lola LMP1. We found that running a higher level of downforce was a better way around Paul Ricard and as a result we didn’t verify Le Mans aero figures and things like that. And the same with Spa – Spa is medium/high downforce in terms of optimum lap time. For us it’s a race in its own right but I think for Audi and Peugeot it will be shakedown for Le Mans and I think they have got three cars there each, plus the ORECA one, so it’s going to be a fairly tough race for us but we are definitely up for the fight.
Adam Airey
Lola Design Engineer
