LE MANS ENDURANCE SERIES

The third round of Le Mans Endurance Series (LMES) ended with Tim Sugden scoring a big hit, unfortunately it was the wrong kind of hit as he smashed into the barriers hard in a somewhat unusual accident just after the 5 hour mark in the 1000 kilometre race run in the late afternoon and evening on Saturday the 13th August.

The Porsche RS GT car had experienced gearbox problems in qualifying causing the team to have to fit the spare drive unit between qualifying and the race.    The problem meant that Tim qualified only in 9th place and so starting driver, British GT Champion Jonathan Cocker was sent out on a wet track with intermediate tyres in a gamble that the light rain would not get worse.   The gamble did not work as the heavens opened whilst the cars were on a double warm up lap it was clear that full wet weather tyres were required.

The resultant pit stop after 5 laps to change tyres put the car to the very back of the field which comprised 4 different classes of which the GT2 are the slowest in theory.    In practice however as the lighter and less powerful cars handle the very wet conditions better they can be faster than some of the more powerful classes and with a massive field of 48 cars taking the start a busy race was in store.

As the rain continued for over three hours first Cocker and then Sugden when he took over began to pull through the field and after Tim’s stint the car was up to a respectable 9th in GT2.   Jonathan gained two more places in his second stint and Tim, although dropping back two places because their pit stops were out of sequence with everybody else due to the tyre change pulled the car back to 6th in class and 22nd overall with two cars in front due to make their last stops so that a 4th or even a 3rd place looked on the cards.   At this stage on a drying track and with intermediate tyres back on Tim was lapping as fast as the leaders.

With about 50 minutes of the race left as Tim came through the Luffield complex in the darkness a special large TV screen placed within the spectator areas comes into the driver’s eye line just before the breaking point for the right handed hairpin.    As Tim came through the TV screen suddenly switched to a shot of a group of cars headed straight for one of the cameras and so shot a full 20 foot square of bright light into Tim’s eyes.   The sudden distraction caused him to miss his breaking point, run onto the very wet grass and with no traction heavy contact with the barriers was inevitable, end of race.

With no finishes yet the 5 race LMES is proving Sugden’s worst series in his busy year as otherwise he is lying second the FIA championship and 5th in the American series despite missing a round two weeks ago due to commitments with the GruppeM squad.  

With the team having a complete rebuild to complete on the FIA #88 car there is no time to complete a rebuild on the LMES car and so entries for the remaining LMES races were withdrawn