Right-rear lower wishbone failure the culprit of Christophe Bouchut’s high-speed accident at Eau Rouge...
With the mechanical problems appear to be in the rear-view mirror, Level 5 puts its focus on recording a solid debut run at next weekend's 24 Hours of Le Mans. (Photo: John Dagys)
While many teams have spent the past month putting their entire focus towards the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Level 5 Motorsports has been burning the midnight in also resolving what exactly went wrong in last month’s 1000km of Spa.
The second round of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup saw Christophe Bouchut suffer suspension failure while heading up to Eau Rouge, the quickest and trickiest part of the famed Belgian circuit. The Lola B11/80 Honda snapped sideways before making a heavy impact into the tire barriers.
While Bouchut escaped injury, the car was nearly destroyed from the massive crash, leaving the David Stone-led team with question marks over the exact failure and future prevention. Despite the culprit, a right-rear lower wishbone failure, having been quickly identified, Stone went the extra mile of hiring an independent lab to study and analyze the cause of the failure.
After nearly three weeks in the lab, along with working with Lola to develop a stronger component, which Stone says will be outfitted on all of the U.K. constructor’s cars in LMP2, he feels confident that a similar situation will not repeat itself next weekend at Le Mans.
“Everything looks really good on that,” Stone said. “I feel positive that we’re going to have confidence in the new component to go forward. In fact, the ACO had mandated that they have to make the new part for all of the cars. Lola did that and they’ve done a good job.
“We worked jointly and closely with Lola and the testing firm that I hired. I kept an open relationship between us, the testing firm and Lola to be sure that we have a good, safe component. I wouldn’t allow our drivers to drive the car until we felt comfortable that we had a safe car.”
The prospects of the chassis ever returning to the track are slim, according to Stone. Instead, the team has reverted to its spare Lola-Honda Coupe for the twice-around-the-clock classic, the same car that debuted at Sebring in March.
While the question of whether Level 5 will continue fielding two entries in the American Le Mans Series, especially considering that its planned ALMS car has been put into action in Europe, remains to be seen. Stone said that it’s in debate right now and that a decision would likely come after Le Mans.
For now, all focus has indeed been turned to the 24-hour classic, where the defending ALMS LMPC champions make their debut with drivers Bouchut, Scott Tucker and Joao Barbosa at the wheel of the No. 33 machine.
With the team’s 2.8-liter Honda V6 twin-turbo powerplant believed to still be lacking some straight-line speed, Stone feels that the key to success next weekend will be perfect execution from the crew. And of course, having a bit of luck.
“Given that we know we can’t run toe-to-toe with the other cars, we have to hope that we can do the better job on the preparation and hope that the work the crew does and the attention to detail will pay off,” Stone said. “Our drivers also need to keep a good pace, be consistent and stay out of trouble. It seems like it would be simple, but those were the things that always went into 24-hour races or any long-distance race.
“It’s really kind of like a lottery being in a 24-hour race because there’s so many different variables that can happen. If you just do it on paper and know you’re x-amount faster or slower than somebody, you can just say, ‘Mathematically, we win.’ But we all know it doesn’t work that way.”
John Dagys is SPEED.com’s Sportscar Racing Reporter, focusing on all major domestic and international championships. You can follow him on Twitter @johndagys or email him at askdagys@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment