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AMERICAN LE MANS SERIES |
01/07/2004 |
Splash‘n Dash To Speed-Up Lamborghini |
Krohn-Barbour Racing Head To Lime Rock |
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Splash‘n Dash To Speed-Up Lamborghini This Weekend
Just one week after Krohn-Barbour Racing gave the fabulous Lamborghini Murciélago R-GT its US auto racing debut, the new team/car combination will compete again in this weekend’s third round of the American Le Mans Series (ALMS) at Lime Rock, Connecticut (July 2-5).
Driven by sports car stars Peter Kox and David Brabham, the Krohn-Barbour Racing Lamborghini came within seven-tenths of a second of clinching third place in the GTS class in last Sunday’s (June 27) race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Ohio. Even in races of two hours 45 minutes duration, every second counts and the Lamborghini goes to Lime Rock with a potential performance gain over the full race distance, compared to Mid-Ohio, of about 24 seconds.
Krohn-Barbour Racing’s chief engineer, John Bright, explains: “At Mid-Ohio, because of the pits configuration, cars had to be refuelled on the left-hand side, but the fuel cell on the Lamborghini is on the right. That meant the fuel had to flow across the car to the tank, not an easy route to get the fuel-line across. But at Lime Rock we’ll be refuelling from the right-hand-side and the fuel will drop straight into the fuel cell. If the car runs reliably, as it did last weekend, this should speed-up each of our two pit stops by about 12 seconds.”
The Lamborghini’s performance should also improve fractionally because it’s had more track time. Before Mid-Ohio the Krohn-Barbour Racing car hadn’t turned a wheel, and compared to the Murciélago R-GT which has raced just once in Europe, it ran on different tyres (Pirellis), with slightly different aerodynamics and a more severe engine restrictor (because of variances between FIA GT and ALMS rules).
Team manager Dick Barbour said, “We were pretty much gathering data about the car from scratch. Every time we ran it, we learned something more about how it responds, for better or worse, to alterations in the set up of suspension dampers and ride height. I’m sure that learning process will continue at Lime Rock.”
Barbour, a legend in US sports car racing as a driver-turned-team manager, describes the Lamborghini as “the most beautiful racing car I’ve seen in my 25 years in the sport. It was designed mostly as a customer car, so that teams like ours can go racing in the production-based GTS class. It’s a great value-for-money starting point, but if we are to win races, we’ll have to develop it – and both Tracy Krohn and I set-up this team with every intention of winning. We know we have a lot of work to do to get there, a lot of catching-up to do because the Corvettes have been running for five years, but we’ll be disappointed if we don’t win a race this season.”
David Brabham, the England-based Australian acknowledged as one of the world’s very best sports car drivers, said: “Last weekend, we were throwing everything we could at the car [in technical set-up], just to see how it responded. Mid-Ohio was never going to be anything more than an extended test session for us, though I did end up racing really hard when there was a chance of hanging on to third place.”
Brabham’s co-driver, Dutchman Peter Kox, observes: “Our biggest challenge is the ALMS calendar. Many of the races are so close together that we have to do four races before we’ll get the chance to do any development.”
After rounds two (Mid-Ohio) and three (Lime Rock) on consecutive weekends, there’s only a one-weekend break before round four at Infineon Raceway, Sonoma, California, on July 16-18, and round five at Portland International Raceway, Portland, Oregon, on July 23-25.
By the time the ALMS circus arrives in Sonoma, Krohn-Barbour Racing’s second Lamborghini Murciélago R-GT will be repaired from the accident damage sustained in a collision with a Porsche 911 GT3 during last Friday’s (June 25) test session at Mid-Ohio. To be driven by professional racer Scott Maxwell and Texan businessman and team co-founder Tracy Krohn, this car will be rebuilt by the Krohn-Barbour Racing crew with a new chassis which was delivered to the team today.
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