Lister Team Le Mans Report
The story of the Lister LMP at the 2004 24 Heures du Mans began in Denmark on Friday 4th June where it was launched in front of Danish TV in its' new red and white livery. From there it drove straight to Le Mans.
There was never any intention of concentrating on qualifying times this year; as the sponsors told us, we needed to finish this year and concentrate on a good finish next year. Our qualifying time was set by Casper Elgaard who had never set a time on qualifiers around Le Mans before; John estimated he could have set a time in the region of 1.40 on race tyres and the data showed that a 1.38 was on the cards - this would have put the LMP around 9th on the grid. The engines we were using were tuned for reliability, not speed.
The story of the engine - we changed this for Thursday qualifying to a new development engine (still tuned for reliability, not power - although it still reached 200mph). Designed by Laurence at Paul Ricard in May, this engine ran on the dyno on Sunday 6th June, drove down to Le Mans on Monday, tested in the second qualifying on Thursday and completed the full race problem free. Why was it running slow for the last two hours? When the combination of the hole in the radiator and the water pump belt failure occurred, the temperatures shot up and the oil temperature sensor failed. We were confident that there was no problem but with two hours to go chose the safe route and treated the engine gently. Back at the workshop this was proved correct - no problem with the engine, just a failed sensor.
The story of the gearbox - there is none - it ran perfectly as did the AGS system, although this was inadvertently switched off for a couple of stints plus we had to make a couple of slight adjustments.
The story of the components - once again, absolutely no failures.
As for the drivers - they made no mistakes in a dramatic race for many other cars.
The race - there were no problems until the 5th hour - John rose to 12th, Casper took over and we were up to 8th. At the 5th hour we were 6th in class and John's lap times were between 4th and 6th fastest at that time. Then the starter failed - so we changed it. For the rest of the race the starter worked perfectly.
At 00.15 we suffered a right rear puncture which caused significant damage to the rear quarter of the LMP including taking out the gearbox oil cooler - all the repairs were made but we lost a lot of time and rejoined the race in 35th position. By 7.30 we had risen to 20th (13th in class). At 7.30, a long pitstop to change front brake discs but we quickly rose back up to 20th.
More drama at 9am when Casper slowed dramatically on the pit straight. Luck was on our side this time - if it had happened anywhere else on the track we would have been out. But the car has to be pushed into a safe place, luckily this was at the exit of the pit lane and the team was able to push the car back to the garage. The problems stemmed from the earlier puncture damage - a hole in the radiator and a broken water pump belt.
And again we rejoined the race in 24th position but ran gently for the remainder of the race - with only one panic - John reported that it felt as if everything was falling off the car, maybe even suspension failure - quickly we removed the tail where a lump of rubber virtually the size of a football was found; this had been jumping around the rear end of the car obviously causing strange sensations! 15kg of rubber has been removed from the car since the race!
Finally, Jens took the chequered flag, 9th in class, crossing the line just behind the race winning Audis. Lister Racing has now finished Le Mans twice - the last time in 1996 with the GT Storm driven by Geoff Lees, Tiff Needell and Anthony Reid who were 11th in GT1.
So - what if ………? Without the puncture a finish in the top 6 was a definite possibility. The positive result shows that the LMP Storm is a 24 Hour racer and all components have been fully tested. Our next target is to show the car is also a quick racer; with a reliable base engine we will now start developing this for more power and will carry on developing the aerodynamics.
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