24 Hours of Le Mans

Kruse Schiller Motorsport Le Mans 24 report

© Planetlemans - Marcel ten Caat

Teams like KSM are “the spirit of Le Mans” – this comment on Eurosport during their Saturday evening broadcast about us was at least a reward for our effort to get the car on the grid for the start of the 24 hours of Le Mans. “Heroes of the weekend” – that title was awarded to us by Radio Le Mans – sounds great, but let’s start with the beginning…

Although Jean Francois Yvon had been the driver during the official test day on 1st June we had decided for Danish driver Allan Simonsen as a 3rd pilot for the 24h of Le Mans. After a successful technical inspection of the car on the Place du Jacobin in Le Mans city centre, the first practice session on Wednesday saw our Lola Mazda with a best lap time of 3:47.802 on the track. Shortly thereafter, the car stopped at the pit because of a broken clutch less than 10 minutes before the end of the first qualifying session. What followed was a lengthly repair, meaning that we missed almost the complete first hour of the second practice session.

Approx. 30 minutes before midnight and the end of the night session: Hideki was on his in-lap when the car hit the curbs in the Dunlop Chicane and got airborne. After flipping over 8 times our Lola – or what was left of it – finally came to a standstill in the gravel – with some debris still falling down from the sky. After a few seconds which seemed endless to all observers finally Hideki started to move and was able to leave the car on his own and walked around it – a big relief for all of us. While Hideki was taken to the hospital for a medical check the remains of the car were collected and brought back to the garage.

The 48 hour race

To say the car was damaged when it was brought back to the pits would be the understatement of the year – it was a wreck! Most people who saw the accident and the car after it were sure that our place on the grid on Saturday would be empty. After removing what little was left of the bodywork and the suspension, an inspection of the chassis revealed damage to the front left section.

The Lola track support immediately formed a “special task force” and came to assist, inspections and discussions started and around noon on Thursday it was finally clear that both the A.C.O. and the chassis manufacturer Lola gave their OK for a repair, so we could start the Herculean task to rebuild the car. We got full support from all our partners, and Lola boss Martin Birrane visited our garage and asked whether we needed more help. The 48 hour race to get the car running until Saturday morning warm up began – sleep during the night – hey, what’s that?

The complete rebuild of the car left us of course with almost no spares for the race – any bodywork for example damaged during the 24 would need to be taped. Fortunately we didn’t have to worry about the engine – the one which was planned for the race hadn’t been built in before the accident. Finally we won – and the applause from the grandstands when our car with Hideki Noda at the wheel made it out of the pit lane on Saturday morning was a great, overwhelming experience and the emotional highlight of the weekend.

On this occasion we’d like to say a big thank you to all our partners who worked with us so hard to get the car back on track – the Lola track support, the technicians from Project Seven and many others, but most of all our crew of mechanics who did a fabulous job.

The 24 hour race

After the warm-up we discovered that some more repairs were needed but we finally managed to take our place on the grid. For the first couple of hours the car actually ran trouble-free – almost impossible to believe after what had happened in the last 3 days. Going for maximum speed would not have been the wisest thing to do in our situation, so we opted for a moderate pace. Getting to the finish line was our first priority. Our car could keep up well with the pace of the quickest GT1 cars and at one stage Allan Simonson was able to do a 3:46,061, our quickest lap of the weekend.

After the first hour we ran in 39th position, after 2 hours it was 34th position, after 4 hours the hourly ACO report listed us in 28th position and we were already advancing further when a problem with the gear selection system led to losing 5th gear. This is normally not a problem if it happens shortly before the end of the race because you can usually continue with the remaining gears. As it was still early in the race we decided to repair the gearbox. About 50 minutes were lost but finally the car was back on track. Some more problems occurred, but none of them as time consuming as the gearbox saga.

It was dark – really dark – on Sunday morning at 02:33 when disaster struck for a last time and Jean had to stop the car on the circuit after Mulsanne corner after the car produced a large cloud of smoke. It came to a halt in the infield, actually at a point of the track which was as far away from the pit as possible. The transmission had failed.

Jean drives with a left arm prosthesis. Single-handed with the steering wheel still fixed to his artificial hand he removed the rear bodywork and tried to fix the transmission problem. Later he radioed back to the pit for help. But there was nothing which could be done to get the car back on track – a drive chain between engine and gearbox had failed completely.

The car was stranded in the infield at a place which could not be accessed by road, so 2 hours after it stopped Jean had to walk for about 15 minutes through the woods to make it back to the pit lane – the game was finally over.

Well, you may imagine that after these events it is quite hard to find a positive last sentence for this report but at least we experienced what a great team we are together with our partners – we never gave up!