......... fourth place finish at ALMS Mid-Ohio

UK car confirms competitive position with blistering qualifying performance, but pits delay denies victory

In their first round of the American Le Mans Series (ALMS) at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course this weekend, the factory Zytek team, sponsored by Lego Star Wars, demonstrated once again that it will be the force to be reckoned with in sports car racing this season. In the closing seconds of Saturday’s practice, 20 year old Hayanari Shimoda cut almost a second off the lap record with an astonishing time of 1min 11.333 sec, confirming Zytek’s pole position for Sunday’s race – the car’s first outing since its decisive victory in the European Le Mans series at the Spa Francorchamps circuit in Belgium last month.

With all the LMP1 cars turning in strong lap times, the race promised to be closely fought – and so it proved, with Shimoda fighting a thrilling battle for the lead with Butch Leitzinger’s Dyson during the first hour of the race. Then incurring a 20 second penalty for a minor infringement during a pit stop and problems passing back-markers out on the track put the car 30 seconds down, giving 20 year old UK driver Tom Chilton – racing the Zytek for the first time this weekend – an uphill task to regain the lead.

Chilton took up the challenge in climbing to 4th place with 10mins remaining. Having reduced the gap with the 3rd placed Audi to 2 seconds the weather conditions turned to rain. Unfortunately this caught the young Englishman out and he span off the circuit with two laps remaining.

“Our performance this weekend was a lot stronger than the final result might suggest,” said Zytek team boss Trevor Foster. “We’ve seen some fantastic racing and, while we are committed to the European LMES this season, we’re keen to see if we can come back to race in other US events later in the year.”