AMERICAN LE MANS SERIES NEWS - ST. PETE'S 05 APRIL 2008 |
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The Drayson-Barwell ALMS squad suffered cruel misfortune in the second race of the 2008 American Le Mans Series, when its Aston Martin DBRS9 was sidelined with an unusual gearbox failure immediately before the race start. The team has never seen this sort of failure in over two years of successful running with the DBRS9, and the gearbox had given no warning of any problem during the whole practice and qualifying sessions at the Florida street circuit. This was a sad end to the big 6.0-litre V12 GT3-spec Aston Martin’s ‘cameo role’ in Drayson-Barwell’s ALMS season, with the new Vantage GT2 machine making its debut at the next round of the series in Long Beach, California in two weeks’ time. Drivers Paul Drayson and Jonny Cocker had been getting to grips with the daunting two-mile St.Petersburg downtown track during Friday’s practice sessions, with Paul sampling a street course for the very first time. Unfortunately Jonny didn’t get the chance to mix it with the second half of the GT2 grid in qualifying (having taken a few scalps at Sebring), as the engine wasn’t running cleanly. This might possibly have been connected to running the new-spec E85 Bio-Ethanol fuel for the first time, but the crew changed the engine ready for Saturday morning’s warm-up session. Everything then ran fine during the morning warm-up and Paul and Jonny were confident of being able to put up a good showing in the 1 hour 55 minute race. Jonny took the car out for the pre-race warm-up laps and then brought it back in to the pit lane for the grid ceremonies, without any sign of a problem. When he got back in the car and started to follow the rest of the field onto the track for the race start, however, he changed up to second gear as normal but then heard a load crunching noise and the DBRS9 lost all its drive and Jonny was unable to select any gears. This was obviously absolutely gutting for Jonny, Paul and the whole Drayson-Barwell team who were relishing the opportunity of having a good run in our first American street race. We’ll get a second chance on the streets of Long Beach, when the stunning new Vantage GT2 car will be flying the flag for Britain in the ALMS. This will effectively be a test session for the new car, however, as it won’t have turned a wheel prior to the team putting it on the track for the first practice session at Long Beach. - end - |
