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Team Modena reflects on Le Mans
Overview: We are proud of the performance of all Team Modena members in the toughest motorsport event in the world - resulting in a finish in this gruelling race. This year presented us with some unavoidable incidents - including being hit from ...
Published: Jun 22, 2007, 5:55 PM
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Overview:
We are proud of the performance of all Team Modena members in the toughest motorsport event in the world - resulting in a finish in this gruelling race. This year presented us with some unavoidable incidents - including being hit from the rear by an LMP2 prototype, where repair work meant our DBR9 spent the 48 minutes in the garage - having previously been fourth in class - before returning to the fray. This obviously challenged our ability to compete for a podium finish and build on our competitive debut showing in this race in 2006.
Team Modena - winners of the Prix Escra
Awarded by the French Academy of the Automobile trade with the co-operation of the ACO and judged on the following criteria:
Presentation of the car at scrutineering - 20%
Pit Garage presentation - 20%
Team Organisation - 20%
Quality of pit work for the duration of the race - 20%
Quality/efficiency of repair work - 20%
And you have to be running at midday Sunday to qualify for the award!
Winning the Prix Escra - a measurement of the best technical performance of any team competing at Le Mans - is a true honour and enables Team Modena to join legendary teams from such famous marques as Jaguar, Porsche, Renault and Mazda on the winners list - and reflects the professionalism and attention to detail the WHOLE team apply when we go motor racing.
Team Modena car performance
We can be encouraged by our performance in that as the only true privateer Aston Martin in the race we demonstrated our competitiveness by being quickest of all the GT1 cars on Thursday night in the wet - when all GT1 cars were running. Our drivers all lapped consistently and put in a largely error free performance. In the dry we could not hope to compete with works cars which had a clear demonstrable engine performance advantage - which we suspect to be engine mapping related. This meant the works cars would exit the corners more effectively and recorded top speed trap times in the order of 8-10 kph greater than our car - with the same aero package. The TM car had less acceleration and a lower top speed than the fastest works cars - which over a lap resulted in a time deficit of between 3 and 4 seconds.
Our Aston Martin DBR9/101 is now the most successful Aston Martin DBR9 and the most successful privately-owned Aston Martin racing car in the marque's history. It first hit the LMS series in July 2005, already with an excellent 2005 championship season behind it, having won in September at the Nurburgring, and in November at Bahrain of that year.
The car was campaigned in 2006 with victory, podiums and a Le Mans finish to it's credit and this year the car has been further developed - and engine mapping aside we believe is still amongst the most competitive GT1 cars available. We look forward to competing in the remaining endurance events of the season - where we anticipate the car will be competitive at every round.
We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Aston Martin Racing on a superb performance in winning the GT1 class - and we hope to have other opportunities to compete against the works team this year
The Future
We have some exciting plans in the pipeline - more details of which are to be released at a later date. Our immediate focus is to continue the remainder of the season with DBR9/101 - and continue the development of the Lamborghini Wycombe supported Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 racecar which runs in the British GT championship. The Team Modena Gallardo GT3 broke the lap record on its debut at Snetterton and we look forward to developing this car into the most exciting GT3 package available.
We also look forward to completing our season in the CJ Super Racing Series in Korea with Gene Lee driving our BMW WTCC car. Despite a bruising last race where our car was despatched into the barriers by the current leader of the championship - the car demonstrated it's performance with its lap times, and with new support we have attracted based on this performance we expect to be in a very strong position for the remainder of the championship - which is based in a strategically valuable area to the consultancy side of the Team Modena Group.
Thanks again to all our supporters and we look forward to seeing many of you at the remaining races this year!
-credit: tm
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