Le Mans Series

Technical problems hinder ProSpeed Competition in LMS Budapest

The fourth race of the Le Mans Series on the Hungarian F1 circuit in Budapest was on the programme this last weekend. One month after the Algarve the Prototypes and GTs were once again facing a 1000 km evening race, held this time around on Sunday evening. Once again the
Belgian ProSpeed Competition entered the Porsche 911 GT3 RSR for the German-British duo of Marco Holzer and Richard Westbrook. After the ProSpeed Competition Porsche 911 had proved itself to be the fastest representative of the make in qualifying, the race itself started off with a race-incident, but just before the halfway mark the top-5 was back within reach. Unfortunately a gearbox problem bought an end to the efforts put in by Marco Holzer and Richard Westbrook.

Both during the free practice as also the qualifying sessions ProSpeed Competition once again proved it had the speed. During the timed laps which would determine the grid positions for the evening race Richard Westbrook clocked up a seventh time, and as such the fastest lap of all the Porsche drivers. Unfortunately in the opening rounds of the race the Brit was involved in a collision, which resulted in a punctured tyre, but this did not hold Westbrook back, who last year had clinched a spectacular victory here in FIA GT2, and later on Marco Holzer neither. The Belgian Porsche 911 GT3 RSR was soon back up in the top-10 and systematically climbed up place by place towards the top-5, right until the gearbox became stuck in third gear and with that the race was over.

“Thus is the first time in years that we have experienced such a defect”, team manager Rudi Penders explained. “It is a technical sport and this year we apparently appear to be less spared than the other teams. Once again everything was perfectly prepared and we don’t leave anything to chance. I fear that bad luck seems to be part of the sport, especially when technical matters are involved, and in this race we mustn’t remember the retirement, but rather the speed of the drivers and the team’s excellent strategy. In fact our pit-stops were faster than that of all our competitors, something which in this championship is of major importance. Should Lady Luck finally be on our side in Silverstone, we should be in a position to close off the European part of the Le Mans Series with a good result. This hasn’t been the year we had wished for, but all in all and apart from the bad luck, both in Portugal and here, we have managed to carry out the transition from a sprint to an endurance championship on a world level in a mere two race weekends. The team now has the automatisms, the drivers are fast and should we now be spared from bad luck then a strong result is on the books. On top of that I look upon this season as a preparation for the coming season, where we’ll continue to play on the endurance factor. Looking to 2011 we must pick the season’s fruits now.”

ProSpeed Competition’s following race is the fifth and last European Le Mans Series race at Silverstone on 11th and 12th September.