TF SPORT ADDS TO ASTON’S JOY IN GTE AM
TF Sport made it a doubly special day for Aston Martin as Jonny Adam, Charlie Eastwood and Salih Yoluc took GTE Am honours, the first for Aston since 2014.
The Anglo-turkish crew – Yoluc the first Turkish driver ever to win at Le Mans – had been embroiled in battle with the works-run Aston Martin of Ross Gunn, Augusto Farfus and Paul Dalla Lana for the first 15 hours of the race before Adam took over at the front on lap 199. Thereafter the TF car was never headed, helped when Gunn pitted with a rear-suspension failure at the end of hour 16.
Adam acknowledged that the works crew had been “very unlucky: a part that normally doesn’t break on the car broke unfortunately for them”, but he was confident that TF would still have prevailed had the battle continued to the end.
While the TF car had a faultless run, its rival was playing catch-up after a 10s penalty for Farfus speeding in a slow zone, while Dalla Lana earned a one minute stop/ go for the same infraction, although confirmation of this only came after its race was lost. “I think the big thing was who was on what tyre – we were on a completely different tyre during the daytime running,” said four-time British GT champion Adam. “We got our option wrong for the daytime, but we got it spot on the money for all the night running.”
Adam’s and Eastwood’s pace through the night broke the challenge of their main opposition, which in the final hour boiled down to a three-way fight for the last two podium spots for the final seven-lap dash.
The Project 1 Porsche of Matteo Cairoli, Porsche Supercup champion Larry ten Voorde and Egidio
Perfetti, which had served a one-minute penalty due to Perfetti not slowing sufficiently at a slow zone, lost out in the final skirmishes to the Dempsey-proton Porsche shared by Matt Campbell, Riccardo Pera and Christian Ried, and the Nicklas Nielsen/ Emmanuel Collard/francois Perrodo AF Corse Ferrari, which had made an extra stop due to a puncture on its out-lap following Nielsen’s first stop. But none could do anything about the runaway TF Aston Martin.
It’s unclear whether Richard Lietz is familiar with the Bill Murray film Groundhog Day, but after spending repeated stints stuck to the tail of the Weathertech Ferrari, and unable to pass, he might sympathise with Murray’s immortal weatherman.
“Not being able to overtake the Weathertech car was quite frustrating”, he said with a hint of understatement after spending a full stint following in the wheeltracks of Jeff Segal. “We changed two tyres, but even with this more grip in right-hand corners I couldn’t really pass him without too much risk.”
Lietz later climbed back aboard the #91 911 RSR-19 in which Gianmaria Bruni had slid from first to last during the opening stint, only to again get stuck behind the #63 Ferrari – now with Toni Vilander at the wheel.
“Somehow the acceleration out of the corners is poor compared to the others,” explained Kevin Estre, the qualifying driver in Porsche #92.
After struggling with oversteer in practice, the drivers seemed happy with the handling in the race, but it was soon apparent that they weren’t going to be challenging for victory. Porsche Director of Works Motorsport Pascal Zurlinden shrugged off questions that Porsche’s rivals might not have shown their true pace in Hyperpole: “This is a question we can’t answer because we don’t have the data.” But Estre, the fastest Porsche man, was no higher than 12th fastest GTE driver in the race.
“We expected to be competitive with our car,” said Lietz. “It’s for sure different than we expected.”
In the end it proved academic as both cars spent lengthy spells in the pits, not that it was much consolation to Porsche WEC head of operations Alexander Stehlig. “There were too many technical problems,” he said. “We’ve got a bit of homework to do.”
“SOMEHOW THE ACCELERATION IS POOR COMPARED TO THE OTHERS” KEVIN ESTRE