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Jarama ELMS

20/05/2001

PK Sport - Ricardo

More Success In The ELMS

PK Sport confirmed themselves as very much the top privateer outfit in this year’s ELMS GT category after finishing a provisional fourth and fifth behind three cars at last weekend’s Jarama round of the ELMS.

The team’s pair of yellow and blue 911 GT3R Porsches survived an incident-packed two and three-quarter hour race that was only decided on the last lap, but demonstrated in the process just what an important role strategy and restrained common sense play in endurance GT motorsport.

Following on from Robin Liddell and Mike Youles’ excellent third place at Donington Park in April, the team arrived in Spain determined to get both Porsches as near to the podium as the factory teams would allow. Being honest, setting mishaps and accidents aside, they couldn’t realistically hope for much better. Robin, who qualified the team’s #60 car fifth fastest on Saturday, was even prepared to admit as much. "We were fifth in qualifying and, on paper, that is the best that we can hope for the race too," he said. "However, if something happens to any of the top four, we’ll be in with a chance." Back amid the cold and bluster of Donington, the second car of Piers Masarati and Mark Humphrey had been running fourth, until problems late in the race, so the evidence was there for all to see. It was possible.

In effect, qualifying proved the point. The two factory BMWs of Ekblom / D. Muller and Lehto / J. Muller were tooth and nail for pole, separated in the end by less than a tenth. The best part of half a second down came the works Porsches, with the Pobst / Collard pairing just pipping Luhr and Maassen by the ridiculously small margin of 37 / 100s. Best of the rest, but by a comfortable margin, was Robin Liddell’s 1:36.201. His time, shy of the works cars by almost three seconds, was still more than a second clear of Stephen Watson, guesting in the Harlow Motorsports GT3-RS. On budgetary considerations alone, this was a pretty impressive performance. In other respects it almost creates a second “privateer” class in GT, with Liddell and Watson sharing the front row.

Only the Paco Orti 911 separated Watson from Piers Maserati and Mark Humphrey in the second PK Porsche, eighth in GT with a time of 1:37.980. Piers was delighted. “It was the first time that I’ve felt really comfortable in the GT3R.” he said later. “Qualifying was excellent. I was really pleased to be only one and a half seconds off Robin. We were that close, and that made be feel very happy with the way things were going.” His enthusiasm was readily apparent. “The ELMS is a different world,” he added, “and Jarama is such a lovely circuit. I’m feeling so much more confident now, and we’re both performing well – much better than we did at Donington.” Now, what was that practical joke all about, Piers? Youles, hold your hand up to that one please.

With Mike Youles (left) and Mark Humphrey (above) starting their respective cars, Mike was alongside Terry Rymer in the Harlow car for the rolling start. Although the sky was overcast the air temperature was still warm and cockpit conditions were not going to be easy on the drivers. The Jarama track, notoriously hard on tyres at the best of times, was already drawing in the heat of the day. Mike Youles, being conscious of the need to look after the car, the tyres and himself, was planning a measured approach to the first half of his stint. At five past the hour (and this became significant later!) the leaders crossed the line and the race was on.

Considering the nature of the track at Jarama, with a tight hairpin at the end of the startline straight, everything went surprisingly smoothly.

While the LMP leaders sorted themselves out, with Magnussen’s Panoz briefly upsetting the Audi applecart, the GT field rapidly established itself into two camps. Close on the tail of the Konrad Saleen S7 came JJ Lehto, starting the #42 BMW. He’d got the jump on Muller in the #43 to lead the opening laps, with the Alex Job Porsches three and four, Collard and Maassen.

Fifth came Youles, under strong pressure from Rymer. On the third lap the former endurance bike champion took the place. “Terry was obviously determined to get past,” said Mike, “but I was conscious of the need to look after the car and our tyres. We only wanted to do one stop, so I let him go. I would have liked to have stuck with him, but I knew it would have rooted the tyres.”

Nice relaxed driving style there, Mike (below)............

.........usually!

This established an order at the front of GT that wasn’t going to change for quite some while. Rymer established an advantage of some fifteen seconds, and there it stabilised. A little further back, Mark Humphrey was having a more entertaining time, although he too was heeding of the team’s pre-race briefing and taking no chances. “At the start you tend to get people piling into the first corner,” he explained. “ It’s always tricky, and with this one being a hairpin at the end of a long straight you’re looking behind you as much as ahead. Perhaps I was too cautious, but I lost one place there.” With the best part of three hours ahead of him, caution was perhaps the wiser part of valour.

A lap later and it happened again. Mark: “We were coming around again when I think it was the Orti car muscled in alongside. I had the choice to move off line and avoid an accident or lose a place. When you’ve got two and three quarter hours ahead of you there’s no point in taking risks. The only trouble was, the Konrad GT2 Porsche followed him through, so I’d lost two places in one corner.”

Undaunted, Mark found himself battling with Hugh Hayden in the #64 car. “I’d lost a bit of momentum,” admitted Mark, “but I eventually settled down and was able to hold him off before getting my head down and pulling away. Then I could start chasing the Orti car.” It didn’t take him long, and once he was into his rhythm he started to make good progress. It was steady stuff; no mistakes and consistent lap times, and it paid dividends.

Within a couple of laps he was back within sight of the #65 car. “I got to within a good quarter of the straight away from him, but for the next six laps or so the gap just see-sawed as the traffic came past us. I was reeling him in gradually, but not by much. It seemed that each time I made up half a second or so, I lost it again by being lapped and getting caught in the traffic. Sometimes it went my way, other times it went his. I eventually pulled it right back and got on his tail, but he wasn’t being too co-operative!” This was a mild understatement, but there was a position at stake, so no blame awarded.

Then, roughly fifteen laps into the race, Mark seized his opportunity. He’d been watching the way that Paco Orti was coping with the leaders as they came through to lap the GT cars, and when Johansson came through in the privateer Audi R8, he saw his chance. “When the Gulf Audi came through, Orti moved wide and got pushed onto the marbles. I simply followed the Gulf car through. It was simple!”

Five laps later and he was within sight of the silver Porsche 911 GT2, operated by Franz Konrad for Maciel Stanco and Bernardo Sa’Nogueira. The car was later to have troubles with an oil leak and a fire, but at this stage in the race it was running tolerably well. Now wise to a new trick, Mark tagged along behind for a further four laps until another suitable candidate arrived in his rear-view mirror. “I just did the same thing again,” he said, with obvious pleasure.

Passing his next target proved far simpler. With less than an hour of the race completed, the #52 Seikel Porsche elected to pit early for the first of what proved to be two driver changes, allowing Mark to drive by into a class seventh, one behind Mike in the sister car. With the leaders on 43 laps, the GT class had now settled into a pattern, with the four works cars heading Rymer in the Harlow car, followed by the two PK Porsches six and seven.

Mike Youles had been keeping a watching brief on the gap to Rymer. “I lost some time with the Audis when they came through the first time,” he explained, “and I was a bit unlucky with the traffic, but I kept him in my sights. I backed off just enough to let the tyres recover, which they did, and then I was able to catch him again.”

Indeed, Youles narrowed the gap back down to nearer nine seconds. Then, “towards the end [of my stint] I made a little mistake,” he admitted. “I out-braked myself into the first corner and went off.” He recovered, but the gap was suddenly back out to twenty seconds again.

An hour and twenty minutes into the race and 'Youlesy' took to the pitlane, where he handed over to Robin Liddell. The stop wasn’t one of the quickest ever – there was a brief problem with an air gun – but it proved to have been better than the one Rymer and Watson made five minutes later. As the pitstop confusion unravelled, the gap between Liddell and Stephen Watson turned out to be just six seconds. PK had made up almost fifteen seconds in the driver change.

Just as the Harlow car was coming back out on track, Humphrey in the #61 PK Porsche was heading in. “The last ten minutes had been the hardest,” he said. “I was really feeling the heat in the car. I wasn’t tired, but the cockpit heat was really draining. That may have caused a lapse in my concentration, and the tyres were going off by then too. I made a small mistake at the first hairpin. I went off through the dusty stuff between the track and the gravel, but I was very careful getting back on the track. It took a while to clean up the tyres, but I was soon back to the kind of lap times I’d been doing before. Then I saw from the pit board that Mike had gone in, so realised it would be my turn soon. Then the call came through from Mike [Pickup, team manager], and I headed for the pits.”

“Mike had said he wasn’t sure if the speed limiter was working OK, so I loosened the belts and took it very carefully into the pitlane. The pit stop went as sweet as anything. There was plenty of time for the driver change while they filled the tank and fitted new tyres, so it felt quite relaxed. Then someone saw a loose wheelnut under the car, but it turned out to be a spare, so panic over.” Piers Maserati was out on track after an excellent stop, without dropping a single place.

Meanwhile Robin Liddell had the bit between his teeth. The blue and white tail of the Harlow car was bobbing around just in front of his nose and he was able to put some real pressure on Stephen Watson. Whether this was enough to rattle the South African isn’t clear, but ten minutes into his stint the South African was put off line by another car and went off. Robin Liddell sailed gracefully by.

Watson’s excursion had flat-spotted all four tyres: Piers was able to sneak through and take sixth place. No problem.

With only one pit stop scheduled for either car, this was the tricky part over. All they had to do now was drive through to the finish – easier said than done. Robin was comfortably away. Although he had no chance of actually catching the four factory cars still in front of him, who were three laps ahead by this time, he now had a generous advantage over the rest of the GT runners. Piers was well clear of Watson, now back racing in the Harlow car, but the gap was closing. “Everyone was having bad understeer problems and Stephen Watson was catching me,” he said, “but I was looking after my tyres and knew that even if he caught up I could still race him to the finish.”

It was a sensible approach, and one that was eventually going to repay him generously, but not before the immediate threat was to be comprehensively eliminated by an incident between Tony Burgess in the Seikel Porsche and Stephen Watson. The latter had narrowed the gap to Piers to an extent that the two were now within sight of one another. Between them lay the #52 Porsche with Burgess driving. The American was two laps down after a second pitstop but chose to make an issue of a piece of track that was not, by rights, his to claim. Watson suffered the penalty, with a damaged wheel rim and holed radiator. He limped to the pits, over and out.

Just half an hour remained. Although nearly a minute separated the two PK cars, they were two laps clear of the recovering Seikel car in seventh. It appeared that all they had to do was cross the line, but further drama was about to unfold. “I went out on to the pit wall to watch the finish,” said Mark Humphrey. “Robin had just had a small spin but was still ahead of Piers. Then he radioed in to say there was something not quite right with the car. That was when we realised that the race had started at five past, and we still had another five minutes to go!”

For ‘not quite right’ read ‘seriously wrong’. “Robin came past very slowly,” continued Mark, “and then went round the corner, just out of our sight.” It was a desperate time for the team as they strained over the pit wall to see what was happening. Unknown to them, just around the back of the pits, Robin Liddell had coasted the car to a halt. One lap, and only one lap, remained to run. “We weren’t sure if Piers had enough time to unlap himself,” explained Mark, but then the importance of those ‘extra’ five minutes became clear. “It was going to be enough!”

As Tom Kristensen was taking the chequered flag to win the twelfth successive race for Audi, Piers Masarati was taking the place from his team-mate on the track. “I felt very sorry for the boys breaking down on the last lap – and that’s the truth,” he said later. “We’re a close team - all very friendly – and we like to see each other doing well.” Mark held the same view. “It was good to get the extra place, but sad in a way. We would have preferred not to have taken it away from the others, but I suppose we only swapped places,” he said. “If they were going to loose a place, better to lose it to us!” he added. “Sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes you’re not,” was Mike Youles’ philosophical verdict. “Apart from my mistake at the end of the stint, we didn’t make an error, although I’ll tell you one thing, it was hard going for an hour and a half’s work!”

The team now has a lengthy break before getting another crack at the ELMS. The team did a good job this weekend,” concluded Piers, “and I’m really glad I’m doing this and not the British GT! The only trouble is, I’m not going to sit in the car for another two months. It’s such a pain!” He will, however, be heading off to France in a few weeks’ time to support the others when PK Sport & Ricardo Vehicle Engineering take on the might of the La Sarthe circuit in the Le Mans 24 Hours. Follow their fortunes here with TotalMotorSport.