24 Hours of Le Mans

KSM finishes the 24h of Le Mans 2010!

© Planetlemans – Marcel ten Caat

Only 27 out of 55 participants made it to the finish line in the 2010 edition of the 24h of Le Mans, among them for the first time the KSM team from Siegburg, Germany, with its LMP2 Lola Judd.

Japanese driver Hideki Noda, Frenchman Jean de Pourtales and the 24 year old British driver Jonathan Kennard formed the KSM driver squad. Kennard had never raced at Le Mans before; he also had no experience in racing at night, so his first task was to pass the Le Mans rookie test (10 laps) during the free practice session on Wednesday. In the following qualifying session all 3 KSM drivers were able to do their compulsory laps without any problems. With a fastest lap time of 3:52,972 KSM finished the first practice day on a respectable 8th place in the LMP2 category.

The team decided to install the race engine already on Thursday and did just a few installation laps in Thursday’s first qualifying session. The final night practice session, which lasted from 10:00 pm until midnight, saw again all 3 drivers on the track and some important set-up work could be done.

The warm-up on Saturday went smooth and the start of the race on Saturday afternoon was very promising. KSM start driver Jean de Pourtales did some exceptionally good stints in the beginning and for a while the car was in 5th position in its class, in 20th position overall.

A small problem with the alternator saw the #39 Lola dropping behind a little, but in the evening Hideki Noda and Jonathan Kennard had retrieved some of the lost time and advanced again into a good position.

At the beginning, the long night went almost trouble-free. Jonathan Kennard, who was impressed by the high speed on the Hunnuadieres straight at night, and his 2 team mates did very good lap times. Unfortunately, the necessary replacement of a gearbox sensor meant that a couple of laps were lost against the competitors.

Sunday morning started with 2 incidents, which caused a lot of work for the team. First of all the car left the track and hit the tyre-barriers at Arnage, later on Jean de Pourtales was pushed off the track by a GT-1 car in the Esses behind Dunlop bridge. A rough estimation of the minimum repair time showed, that the Lola Judd would not be able to fight for a good position any more. Therefore the team decided to play it safe and checked and replaced all parts which could have jeopardized a finish.

With 90 minutes to go it was Japanese KSM driver Hideki Noda who took over the car for the final 2 stints. His job was to cruise, stay out of trouble and get the car to the finish line – and the team still knew from last year, how difficult this can be. In 2009 the KSM Lola stopped after more than 22 hours with an engine failure, but this year everything was much better prepared. In its 3rd attempt the KSM Lola finally made it to the finish at Le Mans.

As already in the Belgian LMS round at Spa Franchorchamps, KSM was supported by the MVI Group through their partner Araxa Racing, they were responsible for the tyre management throughout the race week.

Hardy Schiller: “Of course I am very happy that we finished the race, a big thank you to the whole team which worked day and night to make this possible. Thanks also to the drivers, which did a fabulous job, and to all our partners, especially to the MVI group, which supported us so great during this event. We could have scored a fifth place under own steam, but sometimes you have to settle for less than what is possible. A finish here at Le Mans is still something special, more than half of the participants did not get that far. Now we are looking orward to the next LMS round in sunny Portugal.”