Tom and Hayanari Shimoda drove the Zytek to a fantastic victory in the latest round of the LMES at Nurburgring in Germany

Despite a set back in qualifying which put their Zytek 04S to the back of the grid, the pair pulled off an amazing achievement by coming through the field to take the win. This was Tom’s first victory in the sportscar series and he was delighted to take it in just his fourth outing in the car;

“ Wow. It’s fantastic and I just can’t believe it, from 44th to 1st, brilliant. Hayanari drove really well, and me and the whole team, we’ve worked really hard for this and it’s a fantastic feeling. Being on the top of the podium, spraying the champagne here, at the Nurburgring is an amazing experience. “

The Zytek team had high hopes for a good result after Tom and Hayanari both topped the timesheets during the free practice sessions. Then Hayanari claimed a comfortable pole position in qualifying, only for the car to fail a ‘stall test’ during technical checks in scrutineering.

Tom explained; “ The car has to stall when you cover the air intake restrictor and ours didn’t. Something had broken during qualifying and although it doesn’t result in any performance gain, the car breaks the regulations. That is the rule and so we have to take the penalty. I’m really disappointed as Hayanari did get the pole that we all thought we should get. This has put a very different situation in front of us and obviously makes the job much harder, but we haven’t given up, we have a very strong race set-up and we will still have a chance. “

The 1000kms race distance would give Tom and Hayanari something in the region of 6 hours to turn things around. The pressure was also on the whole pit crew as their vital roles during the re-fuelling and tyre changes would have to be perfect for the team to stand any chance.

Setting off at the back of the 45 car field, Hayanari took the start and during his first double stint did a great job and managed to get the Zytek up to 4th overall.  He had picked up a drive through penalty for passing another car when the safety car was out, but this cost just 30 seconds and when he came in to hand over to Tom, the team still were chasing hard.

Tom took over and continued to close the gap to the leading three cars. On many laps Tom in the Zytek was the fastest car out there and he maintained the challenge despite a couple of set backs;

“ I had a spin when the rear wheels locked up during a downchange. It was nothing dramatic, just a brief lock up, but it was enough to spin me and luckily I kept it on the track and just carried on. Then during one of my pitstops for fuel, the car wouldn’t re-start. I lost about 20 seconds I think while the team fixed the problem. It got going again and after that everything was just fine. The car felt fantastic. “Tom completed his stint that had lasted for over two hours and handed back to Hayanari again.

Lap by lap Hayanari was closing in. He moved up to second and then with just 7 laps remaining, he took the lead. It had been a brilliant performance by the whole team, with the Zytek coming home to win by 8 seconds.

After 6 hours of racing, having started at the back of the field, suffering a drive through penalty and overcoming technical problems as well, they had done it. The team were ecstatic.

Mike Earl, who overseas Tom’s performances in the Zytek as well as running him in the Honda Touring Car in the BTCC, was really pleased with his young protégés drive;

“ This has been a very steep learning curve for Tom. He has only driven a sports prototype a handful of times and with each extra bit of experience he just keeps getting better and better. We’ve seen that this year in Touring Cars and today he has shown that he can get the job done in the Zytek prototype as well. I have no doubt that he will be the complete article one day. During his double stint he was closing down the leaders at the same rate Hayanari had done. I was really happy to see him work so well with the team to get this result.”

Tom had achieved his first win in sportscars and reflected on what had been an amazing challenge;

“We had never raced here at the Nurburgring before. We lost a lot of the first practice session when we had to change the engine. They put us to the back of the grid and we had problems in the race. It’s hard to believe that we have won. Everybody did a brilliant job this weekend and now the Zytek team are leading the LMES Championship. We can’t wait for the last round in Turkey. “

That final LMES race is on the 13th November at the new Grand Prix circuit near Istanbul. Tom and Hayanari will be driving there and aiming to clinch the 2005 Championship for Zytek.