European Le Mans

Nurburgring: Harold Primat race report

Gearbox problem ends Primat's strong race start at the Nurburgring Harold Primat's hopes of a strong result at the Nurburgring 1000kms were dashed when his race was ended prematurely by a broken gearbox on his Pescarolo-Judd 01. The Geneva-based ...

Published: Jul 2, 2007, 11:47 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

Gearbox problem ends Primat's strong race start at the Nurburgring

Harold Primat's hopes of a strong result at the Nurburgring 1000kms were dashed when his race was ended prematurely by a broken gearbox on his Pescarolo-Judd 01. The Geneva-based driver, who started the race in Pescarolo Sport's 17 car, was forced to pit after 54 laps and despite the team's best efforts, the problem proved to be terminal.

Retirement was unfortunate for Primat who, having started from 16th on the grid, had done a solid job in the opening stages, moving up five places on the first lap alone, before running ninth overall.

Primat reflected: "I made a good start and dived down the inside of the start/finish straight to pick up a couple of positions. Then, into turn one, everybody was moving to the inside line so I moved to the outside and passed two more cars. At turn two we made up another place so we'd overtaken five cars in the first two corners which was a great feeling."

Harold reached his first scheduled pit stop in a healthy ninth position overall and rejoined eleventh to battle with the Zytek of Tom Chilton and the Charouz Lola of Stefan Mücke.

"We were able to match their pace, but there had been a collision between a couple of GT cars and as I avoided the debris they both nipped past." Primat said "We managed to stay with them comfortably, but then an alarm showed on my dashboard."

As the Pescarolo Sport team searched the telemetry to discover the cause of the alarm, Primat continued, but was soon forced to pit. "The alarm came on a few more times and then there was a strange mechanical noise from the back of the car, so the guys asked me to pit. It looks like one of the teeth of the third gear ratio broke and damaged the gearbox. It's an unusual problem to have, and the team have never experienced it before, but unfortunately the race was over for us.

"It's a shame because we were ninth with around four hours to go and from there I think a top five finish would have been realistic and brilliant for our championship assault."

-credit: www.haroldprimat.com

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 Nurburgring: Allen Timpany Friday notes

Next article Nurburgring: Team Modena race report

Top Comments

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

View More & Comment

Latest news

When Can-Am made its controversial comeback

General

When Can-Am made its controversial comeback

Yamaha boss on MotoGP changes under Liberty: 'We must be careful not to lose our fans'

MotoGP

MGP MotoGP

Japanese GP

1 h

Yamaha boss on MotoGP changes under Liberty: 'We must be careful not to lose our fans'

Kyle Busch remembered: Rowdy’s most notable Phoenix moments

NASCAR Cup

NAS NASCAR Cup

Phoenix II

1 h

Kyle Busch remembered: Rowdy’s most notable Phoenix moments

Mercedes explains why its upgrade made its F1 car harder to drive

Formula 1

Singapore GP

Mercedes explains why its upgrade made its F1 car harder to drive

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