ALMS

Trois-Rivieres: Archangel race summary

ARchangel up all night at Trois-Rivieres. August 9, 2002 Road Atlanta, GA -- Archangel Motorsport worked day and night at Trois Rivieres to repair their heavily-damaged LMP 675 for Le Grand Prix de Trois-Rivieres on August 3, 2002 in ...

Edited: Aug 10, 2002, 3:47 AM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

ARchangel up all night at Trois-Rivieres.

August 9, 2002 Road Atlanta, GA -- Archangel Motorsport worked day and night at Trois Rivieres to repair their heavily-damaged LMP 675 for Le Grand Prix de Trois-Rivieres on August 3, 2002 in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, Canada. This was the second race in a row where the valiant and dedicated squad worked through the night in order to place a competitive car on the grid.

The team's Millington-powered Lola B2K/40 suffered massive damage in the Friday qualifying session and it was extremely doubtful whether the car would make it into the race on Saturday. In a perfect example why it's never safe to bet against the resolve and determination of the Archangel crew -- the crew stayed up all Friday night and into Saturday's race -- not only was the car ready, it was only 4 laps short of the class victory when the turbo blew in a glorious display of white smoke.

It's important to note that in a class severely tested this season with engine reliability issues, the team's #13 Millington Lola B2k\K/40, piloted by Ben Devlin and Marc-Antoine Camirand, had absolutely no engine issues for the entire race. In fact, the Millington powerplant has proven extremely reliable -- and fast -- delivering 5 podium visits in 5 races.

Mike Johnson had this to say about the Trois-Rivieres experience: "We knew after D.C. that we were going to have a very fast car for Trois-Rivieres, and when we signed on Marc-Antoine Camirand we figured that we had a really good shot at the pole. Marc-Antoine tried to set some really fast times in practice and we were on track to do the same, or better, in qualifying. On about his 5th qualifying lap, one of the upper-rear control arms failed, which took the car straight into the wall, damaging over 50% of the bodywork and also putting three massive holes in the tub where the suspension mounts up and where the master cylinders bolt on."

"We went to IMSA to see if we could use the tub on our spare car -- but it's against the rules. So, the crew was up all night and spent about 30 hours -- basically from the end of qualifying to about 5 minutes into the next day's warm-up getting the car ready. The crew worked real hard to completely rebuild the tub -- along with all the other repairs needed -- and we went out and did the warm-up and entered the race."

"The race went great; Ben had an excellent start, but caught some debris in the first turn accident and had to come in for some tape on the nose of the car, but we did that under the yellow flag so we didn't really lose anything except that we dropped back to dead-last. We quickly moved up in the field -- even reaching the top-ten or so -- and then Ben got hit which knocked the tail off. We came in for a pit stop to fix the tail, but when the tail came off it ripped the wiring harness off as well - so we were in the pits for about 6 laps. We had to use the tail that was damaged in the qualifying session, and because it was damaged it was secured on the car with duct tape. We got the car back out and kept running and everything was going great."

"We climbed back up to 1st in class and then about 4 laps from the end of the race we had a failure in the turbo. Basically, the impeller shaft just snapped in half which ruptured an oil line and the oil went everywhere which made it look like a fire -- but it actually wasn't -- just a lot of smoke. Ben pulled over and we fell to second. All in all, it was a fantastic effort by the crew and an excellent job by the drivers. I couldn't be any more proud of the job Archangel did this weekend. It's just such a heart-break to work so hard and be so close to winning. It would have been a hell of an achievement for all of us to have won this race. It felt really good at the end of the weekend to have all these people from a lot of the other teams stop by and congratulate us on our effort. Teams were showing back up on race day morning and watching us still trying to put our tub back together after being up all night."

"It was another great race for the Archangel team -- but unfortunate for the crew in that we had yet another all-night work session and the turbo trouble at the end," said Devlin. "The race started with a little trouble right at the beginning with a couple of cars getting together that brought us in for some debris-damage to the car -- which then placed us at the back of the pack. We just kept plugging away after that -- the car was running really, really well. We had another problem with the rear bodywork coming off due to getting hit -- but we solved that problem as well. We just kept up our pace and eventually worked up to first in class and it looked as though all the team's hard work was going to pay off with a class win. But, it was not going to be our day. Just short of the checkered flag our turbo went and we were out completely -- but still scored a second-in-class."

Additional information on the Archangel organization is available to you at www.archangelmotorsports.com and on Ben Devlin at www.bendevlin.com.

-am-

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Series Notes of Interest 2002-08-07

Next article Pfaff signs as Jeff Pabst sponsor for Mosport race

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Christian Horner opens up on Red Bull F1 exit: “Perhaps it was perceived I had too much influence over the team”

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1 11 min

Christian Horner opens up on Red Bull F1 exit: “Perhaps it was perceived I had too much influence over the team”

Jorge Martin: “I don’t feel I will struggle anymore” in MotoGP title run-in

MotoGP

MGP MotoGP

Indonesian GP

1 h

Jorge Martin: “I don’t feel I will struggle anymore” in MotoGP title run-in

"Extremely difficult": Calendar clashes threaten Marco Wittmann's DTM future

DTM

DTM DTM 1 h

"Extremely difficult": Calendar clashes threaten Marco Wittmann's DTM future

Christian Horner's inside story of how Red Bull built its own F1 engine

Formula 1

Christian Horner's inside story of how Red Bull built its own F1 engine

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts