Tom and his team mate Hayanari Shimoda finished in 4th place for the Zytec Motorsports team at Mid Ohio after dominating all the practice sessions and starting the race from pole position.

It was a very encouraging debut in sportscar racing for Tom at Mid Ohio, the first time he has ever raced the Zytek LMP car, and despite taking over a very battered machine for the final stint, Tom gained several places back during the last hour to eventually finish in 4th place.

The Zytek team were very optimistic of a good result after setting fastest times in the Friday and Saturday practice sessions, but knew the race would be tough with competition from the factory supported American Teams.

Tom and Hayanari shared the circuit time during practice, with Spa winner Hayanari concentrating on qualifying set up with new tyres and Tom doing the bulk of the race practice on older tyres. Tom was still adjusting to the demands of the job as he explained;

“I was going in a bit at the deep end on Friday. I still only had the experience of a few laps in the car at Magny Cours a couple of weeks ago and then to go out here, a circuit I had never seen before with some of the best sportscar drivers in the world was quite eye-opening. I took it steady to start with but each time I drove I got quicker and found out more about how the car behaved. Dealing with the slower traffic was interesting, I’ve never raced in anything where the speed differential between the fastest and slowest cars is this high. That keeps you focused all the time.“

It was already agreed that Hayanari would qualify the Zytek, having had much more experience than Tom with the car and the 20 year old Japanese driver did the job superbly. In a very exciting session, red flagged to recover a stranded car, he was lying second with just minutes of the session remaining and put in a stunning lap to take pole by over a second.

In the Sunday morning warm up it was Tom’s turn to shine as he set the fastest time of the session, quicker even than his team mate, to head the time sheets. Things were looking very positive for the young team.

As the race got underway, Hayanari didn’t get the best of starts and was passed by the Dyson of James Weaver and was coming under big pressure from one of the Audis which then drove into the rear of his Zytek, breaking off one of the aerodynamic wings. Worse was to come as later in his stint Hayanari was hit hard and knocked off the track by the slower GT class Maserati. This destroyed the rear wing end plate and part of the rear diffuser causing a significant loss of downforce. This forced Hayanari to come into the pits to have the broken parts removed along with a lot of grass from the sidepods.

At the same time, the team swapped drivers and it was Tom’s turn. He treated the early laps with caution;

“As I watched Hayanari come in I was quite shocked at the damage to the car. With the rear end plates, rear winglets and diffuser all broken and the thing covered in mud and grass I thought what will it be like to drive? I was careful on the opening lap and could tell straight away that we had lost a lot of the downforce I had been used to. I adjusted pretty quickly to the lack of grip and after a few laps I knew the limits and felt ok with it.“

When Tom rejoined the race he was in 6th place and a lap down on the leader. For the next hour Tom set about trying to claw back some time and did a fantastic job through the traffic. With only one yellow flag period to get a breather, he was hard at it in the cockpit and bit-by-bit, gaining places back. With half an hour still to go, Tom was up to 4th place and closing on the 3rd placed Audi of Le Mans winner Frank Biela. He had driven a superb stint and had cut Biela’s advantage from over 15 seconds down to just a fraction of a second. As Tom latched onto the tail of the Audi and put the German under pressure, he was called in by the team for a final fuel stop. That effectively ended the Zytek team’s chances of a podium finish, but as Tom re-joined he hadn’t given up;

“When I went back out after the last pit-stop the team came over the radio and told me to keep pushing hard. I could see the Audi ahead when we were on the long back straight and I just drove as hard as I could and saw the gap closing.“

Unfortunately with just a few minutes of the race remaining the conditions changed dramatically as heavy rain started to soak the track. Tom had never driven the car, or anything like it, in these wet conditions and there wasn’t enough time to make a stop for wet tyres. Tom carried on driving on the dry slick tyres, and as the team had requested, kept pushing as hard as he dare. The difficult conditions eventually got the better of him on the final lap and he slid off the track, onto the grass;

“That was a real shame to end up stopped out on the track, but it didn’t make any difference to the end result. The leader had already completed the final lap so we couldn’t have finished any higher.”

“I’ve enjoyed this week a lot, the challenges are huge and I think I did well during the race. I would love to come back over here to drive the car again sometime. Hopefully I will get the chance.“