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Estoril ELMS

15/07/2001

Harlow Report

A Thrilling Third

The Harlow Motorsport trio of Terry Rymer, Adam Simmons and Gavin Pickering made an impressive entry into the ELMS at Estoril last weekend. With the guarantee of a place in next year’s Le Mans 24 Hours at stake, competition in the GT category was fierce, and the Essex-based outfit was among several with British interest unlucky not to claim that coveted reward. Third place at the flag was an excellent result, but fastest race lap from Terry Rymer and an early class lead suggests that victory was well within the realms of possibility.

The team had been on a hectic schedule all week – and it isn’t over even yet, with another race due this coming weekend at Donington Park – but were straight on the pace from the moment they arrived in Portugal. Two days of testing was enough to allow the Harlow guys a chance at getting to know the Estoril circuit, changed since the last time Terry Rymer raced there. More to the point, his previous visit had been on two wheels, not four, and Terry was keen to explain that the technique, and braking distances in particular, were very different. All three appreciated the length of time they were able to spend in the cars, and this was reflected in some good times from all members of the squad. “With more time to practice you can get a lot more out of the car,” explained Terry. “I’m only just learning how to achieve a good set up, and in the British championship you never really get enough time to do that properly – even if you’re in the car all session. To go to an ELMS race and get a two-hour session on day one, two long sessions on day two and then qualifying on top of that, well, you can get over half a season’s British track time in one weekend!” Gavin Pickering agreed. “I’ll do more British races, of course, but the European rounds offer so much better value. I love PowerTour, but if you’re looking to make something out of the sport you’ve got to look international.”

In the end qualifying didn’t quite live up to expectations and hopes for car 66, but Adam Simmons wasn’t unduly concerned. “It’s not that disappointing really,” he explained. “Terry didn’t get what he’d consider a clear lap, but it’s really not worth pushing too hard in qualifying. It’s a six-hour race, and while pole would be nice, it doesn’t matter after a couple of laps.” So the red white and blue car lined up eleventh overall (just seven-tenths off the class pole), fifth in class, with the former endurance bike champion set to take the first stint.

It was hot and dry come Sunday, and the GT drivers viewed those in open-topped prototypes with a certain degree of envy – and it had nothing to do with pace and downforce. Life in the cockpit of a Porsche 911 under the blazing Portuguese sun was likened by one to pedaling an exercise bike in the Sauna while wearing a fully padded ski suit. Physical fitness was going to be an important factor in this race, and there’s few as fit as Terry Rymer. He certainly made an excellent start, getting the jump on several of those ahead of him to be third in class into Turn One. His opening charge didn’t end there either, and he was up to second by the time the pack wheeled back to exit the next corner, just nipping in ahead of Mike Youles in the pole-setting PK Sport Porsche #60.

The early class leader was Xavier Pompidou in the Freisinger Porsche #77, but Terry was sitting on his tail. While the gap between Terry and those behind was growing, the battles for third and fourth was separated by less than a second. It remained that way for quite some time.

By the time the leading Gulf Audi was scything through the backmarkers, the margin for class honours in GT still stood at around eight tenths, thanks largely to some brilliantly quick laps from Terry Rymer. At this stage he was consistently producing times in the low 1:46 bracket – and this with a full tank of fuel – but better was yet to come. “Actually,” said Terry later, “we had a bit of a problem with understeer all weekend. Without that I’d have been able to go even faster, but we found that the car ran best with a full tank. I even qualified on a full tank! It was holding the front end down so much better.” Whatever the technicalities, Rymer was making the Freisinger driver work hard for position. These two were extending a generous advantage over the chasing pack, although Riccitelli was holding on close. With nine laps completed a dispute between Richard Dean / Mike Youles was just starting to get interesting when the Skea car hit a problem. Actually, the “problem” may have been another car, and the “hitting” involved damage to the rear of Dean’s car. The net result, however, was that the power steering pump on the Porsche decided to fail big-time and deposit an amazing quantity of oil across the racing line (and Youles’s screen!). The circuit was a mess and the safety car was the only logical answer.

Making the oil safe was quite a major undertaking, with the marshals dusting the oil slick with cement along a kilometer or more of racetrack. For several laps the Audi estate acted as head to a weaving snake of increasingly hot and bothered racecars before finally turning off its lights and heading for the pitlane. Racing resumed and Terry was once again among the first to respond. Pompidou made Rymer’s task far easier by spinning into the gravel at Turn One. The Harlow driver required no second invitation, and swept through to take the class lead. “I got a really good run,” admitted Rymer. “I seemed to get the jump on all of them. I did exactly what I’d done on the first start, when I’d blasted past everyone. I couldn’t believe it when it worked a second time!” He even hounded the GTS Viper, below.

Once clear of the pack, Terry was on something of a mission, and his times reflected this. His laps were among the fastest of the day and were enough to safeguard his class lead for some time, although the advantage was better extended by a second spin from the chasing Pompidou. Half way through the opening stint, Riccitelli briefly snatched the GT lead, but by the time 50 laps had been completed Terry was back out front again from Pompidou second, Mike Youles third and Riccitelli now back in fourth in the #71 Racing Engineering entry. “Terry was pulling out a nice lead and maintaining a four second gap,” said Adam Simmons. “It was an excellent start for us, although the safety car screwed things up a bit.”

The extended pace car period had allowed the GT cars to run very lengthy first stints, but the Harlow car was still among the last to make the stop. Gavin Pickering was next in. “I spun it a couple of laps before I came in,” admitted Terry. “I was caught out by the tyres. They went off towards the end of the stint, but very suddenly.” Earlier he’d had a run-in with one of the other Porsches. “I thought it was Johnny Mowlem or Richard Dean at first, and I said so on air,” said Rymer, who helped out in the Eurosport commentary box after his first stint was over. “Whoever it was gave me a punt up the back and I lost it big time. I managed to collect it quickly enough, but it was a worrying moment. I had to go back and apologise when I realized it wasn’t one of them.” What Terry hadn’t noticed as the world spun before his eyes was that the culprit was none other than Riccitelli in the Racing Engineering car, so explaining how the car had emerged as class leader mid-way through the first stint. In recompense, a slow pitstop had subsequently dropped the #71 car down the order.

Conversely, the first Harlow stop went well. “It was a very clean pitstop,” said Gavin Pickering. “Terry had set a very good pace, but the pace car prevented him from extending his position as much as he might have.” It sounded as though he might have wished for a more generous buffer, but he was bearing up well under the circumstances. Adam Simmons was sympathetic. “He got slung out in the lead,” he said “It was the first time he’d been in that sort of situation, so he was under a lot of pressure.” His task wasn’t made a lot easier when the pipe to his drink’s bottle broke after ten minutes “I had to manage the rest of my stint without a drink,” said a parched Gavin Pickering after the event.

Gavin was certainly up against some very quick opposition out there, Robin Liddell, for one. Pompidou – who was still out there and running on fumes – had temporarily inherited the class lead and was sixth overall, just ahead of Monteiro in the Brookspeed Viper, with Gavin Pickering eighth, Mark Humphrey ninth and the fast-moving Liddell rounding out the top ten.

As the two-hour marker approached, Gavin Pickering was in a hectic on-track battle with the Noel del Bello Racing Porsche #63. It wasn’t for position – the flower-powered car was already a lap down, but this appeared to have little impact on the driver’s willingness to give ground. “Three times on one lap he cut me off!” exclaimed a less than happy Pickering. “I had the line each time and he just kept cutting across my nose.” It was third time unlucky for Gavin. “ I’d just got past him at the end of the start-finish straight and he did it again! I was forced to lock up as he came across.” The Harlow car did a quick spin and recovered rapidly enough, but that wasn’t the real problem. “It cost me about eight seconds and a bit of damage on the side, but more than that, I’d flat-spotted the tyres. After that couldn’t do the times I wanted to.” It was a team decision to leave him on the old rubber, despite the vibration, but the time lost in the pitlane for new tyres would have been far more expensive. “We had to bite the bullet and leave him out there,” said Adam.

So, with two hours completed the class order was Freisinger leading from Robin Liddell in the PK Porsche #60, with Gavin Pickering holding third but under increasing pressure from Geoff Lister in the Seikel Motorsport car #52 and Ni Amorim, now at the wheel of the #71 Porsche. Just before the tangle of second-phase pitstops began in earnest both subsequently got ahead of the Harlow car, but Gavin’s most alarming moment came towards the end of his stint. “I was coming into double left-hander at the back of the circuit and a marshal just walked across the track! I was doing about a hundred and fifty at the time and there he was, wandering leisurely across to pick up some debris. It gave me a heck of a fright!”

By the time Adam Simmons was in the car and racing once again, the #66 car was back up to fifth in GT. With 100 laps completed the order was Liddell leading for PK, Dumas second for Freisinger, Amorim third (#71) and then Adam fourth. “I was racing from the word go,” he said, although some of his more entertaining scraps came with those further down the order. This was a race where blue flags were notably absent and tail-enders and backmarkers offered just as much contest as those jostling for position. “I was even fighting with the #74 car (Skea Racing’s second). I kept breaking away from him, and then getting caught up with other cars and falling back. It was a great battle and kept it very interesting.” Actually, what Adam was probably not aware of at the time was that everyone was having exactly the same battle with the Skea car. It was simply so far off the pace that drivers had only just got over the task of lapping it once, when they had to do it again!

More significant was his tussle with #70 Luc Alphand Racing Porsche. This was one that mattered, since it was for fifth in class. The pair circulated so closely during one period that the gap seemed made of elastic. Each time they came upon a backmarker the distance narrowed, only to extend again as the Harlow car got ahead of the obstruction. Having disposed of the Skea car they then had to contend with the Sebah Racing Porsche #64 which they dispatched down the main straight. It was hugely entertaining stuff, with the red Alphand car repeatedly looking towards the inside at any opportunity. Adam was obviously getting the better of most encounters, but lap after lap they were nose-to-tail, often with less than a car’s length between them.

With 150 laps completed, the battling twosome came upon the #74 car (again!) and things very nearly went pear-shaped. If Marques in the Alphand car didn’t give the Harlow car a nudge, then there was little more than a hair’s breadth in it. Observers felt sure that this was going to end in disaster any moment – for one or other of the two – but miraculously they both survived, but not before the delay had allowed the #52 Seikel car to catch up.

The first to fall to Magnus Wallinder’s extraordinary pace was Luis Marques, with the Seikel driver nipping neatly up the inside. Adam had taken on class fourth when the Paco Orti #65 car pitted on lap 148, but Wallinder was soon placing him under extraordinary pressure. “He was being very, very pushy,” said Simmons “I was aware that he was running a quicker pace than I was, so I decided to let him through rather than make a mistake.”

Wallinder left his braking far later into the hairpin at the bottom of the hill and snatched the position. “I then tried to run behind him,” added Adam, who had eased away from Marques by a generous second. Urged along by the Seikel car’s pace, he held the position comfortably until the time came to hand over to Terry Rymer for the final stint.

During the pitstop there was a slight hitch with the refueling rig, and Terry was concerned that there might not be enough fuel to last the remainder of the race. In the end, he needn’t have worried unduly. Although on the same lap as Ni Amorim, third in the RE 911, and Magnus Wallinder, he was soon a lap clear of the Luc Alphand Racing entry and looked set for a top five finish in the class. That was before the controversial exit of Tom Coronel in the leading Gulf Audi R8 and the ensuing pace car period – only the second of the race. At the time Terry had been just ahead of the leaders, so was down in the nether regions of the convoy when the pace car collected Derichebourg in the Courage. “There was nobody behind us on our lap, so we could afford to come in and put in about 13 seconds of fuel,” explained Adam. “We only lost about two places on track but now had plenty of fuel for the rest of the race.”

The splash ‘n dash was a wily move by the Harlow team. Back out on the track Terry was unaware of exactly what was going on, but he did know that he was now closing on the Seikel car. Also circulating well was Pompidou, back in the Freisinger car and leading the class. Despite rumours that the car had an engine problem Pompidou had just set the fastest lap of the race and was extending his lead over Robin Liddell, chasing from second in the PK Porsche. Then, with just ten minutes to go, the Racing Engineering car expired with what looked to be a head gasket problem. Certainly there were copious quantities of fluid being ejected from the right bank exhaust on Ni Amorim’s car as it pulled in beside the Armco.

For some while, Terry had been narrowing the gap to the Seikel car and it was now tantalizingly visible along the longer stretches of track. He put in a tremendous spurt, snatching back fastest race lap with a 1:44.816 in his efforts to claw back the margin. The gap was just eight seconds with five minutes remaining. Despite this it seemed unlikely that Rymer was going to be able to catch and, more importantly, pass the car, but then the #52 car inexplicably spun. It only took the blink of an eye, but in an instant the Harlow car was through. Moments later a somewhat bemused Terry Rymer took the chequered flag. “I thought we’d finished fourth,” he said “I saw the mechanics jumping up and down all over the place and thought they’d gone crazy for fourth place.” Not fourth, Terry, third! “He didn’t know where he was,” explained Adam. “He had no idea he was third. Terry realized Wallinder had spun, but didn’t know that the other car (Amorim) had retired.”

The team was overjoyed by the result. “We gave them a good run, didn’t we!” said Terry. “We were always in the hunt and the guys worked so hard all weekend. They really deserved this,” Adam Simmons was equally ecstatic. “Those last five minutes were totally mad,” he said, “but I’m really, really pleased. It was definitely worth going and I’m enormously happy with the result.” Gavin Pickering, who is relatively new to the team, was a little more restrained. “It was an excellent event and a great achievement for the team. I was proud to be there with Harlow for their greatest race so far.”

Gavin Pickering is scheduled to remain with the team for the rest of the season, sharing the second car in the British series with Nigel Albon. “I like driving with Harlow. There’s very strong leadership and organization within the team and the rapport between mechanics and everyone else is very good. We all had a great time in Portugal as well as a good result.”

The team is out at Donington this coming weekend for Round 9 of the Privilege Insurance British GT Championship. “What we need really is another car,” said Adam Simmons, who had clearly enjoyed their extended track time at Estoril. “Then we can all do an hour each! Their next European excursion is a couple of weeks away, when they head for the Czech Republic and more ELMS action (August 5).