Le Mans Series Hungaroring 1000 Kilometres 2010

Eventful Le Mans Series race in Hungary

A very interesting race with a lot of unexpected happenings and dramas took its place for the first time in Hungaroring, the track which is famous mainly due to its inclusion to the Formula One World Championship during the time Hungary was still behind the iron curtain in the 1980s. Later about 1990, Hungaroring hosted several Interserie Sports Car races. Particularly the 1990 edition was excellent, with eleven Porsche 962C's present in the race. Occasional visits of the FIA GT Championship and a one-off visit of the Italian GT Championship complete the listing of notable sports car events held in Hungary. This race actually replaced the famous and traditional 1000-km-Rennen at the Nürburgring.

Despite what had been said about the eventfulness of the race, the entry was actually one of the worst seen in the Le Mans Series in recent years and definitely the poorest one among the races covered by RSC personally. Despite only 38 cars was considered a success compared to the previous Algarve race, which had never been well supported with the LMS championship, there were no big factory teams and generally there was a lack of cars in the premier LMP1 class. We had a private Peugeot entered by Oreca, the only turbo diesel car in the field and a paper favourite number 1, a pair of closed Rebellion Lolas, a private Aston Martin LMP entered by Signature and a championship-returning Ginetta-Zytek of Mansell family. They missed Spa race due to preparation for the Le Mans and then they missed Algarve due to an early accident in Le Mans.

Otherwise the entry was pretty standard for 2010 LMS and with no BMW factory support in GT2. Eleven cars in LMP2 was same as in Belgium earlier this year and four more than in Algarve. All FLM regulars were present as well (even one more than in Belgium but one was a non-starter due to an accident). GT1 class is just two cars this year, which an exception of Spa, the preparation race for one-off 2010-GT1 Le Mans 24 Hour race in Le Mans. These cars will not be part of the Le Mans Series races next year. There is no improvement in the class even for the next race in Silverstone. Two old Saleens found here its home after being thrown away the World GT Championship. GT2 class was OK but the already mentioned missing BMW factory cars. Felbermayr-Proton team even entered a third car, the 2007 model with no 2010 updates for the Felbermayr family supported by Marco Seefried who did the qualifying and starting driver job. Another new entry in the field was a welcome return of Lola-based MG, former RML car, now entered by a new team called RLR msport.

The race was planned as a night race; in fact last two hours were run into the darkness. Another new approach was only two-day programme. All three practice sessions were scheduled on Saturday while the rest would be held on Sunday. After long periods of rains in the central Europe the weather was fine all weekend, it was sunny and rather hot. During the first two day-light sessions, it was the Oreca entered Peugeot that dominate the sessions followed by LMP2 HDP prototype entered by Strakka Racing. Rebellion Lolas were almost three seconds off pace and the rest of LMP1 cars struggled to beat LMP2 opposition. That all changed during the night free practice session. Both Rebellion Lolas improved by a huge margin and despite their time did not match those of Peugeot or HPD from the afternoon, both Lolas were at the top followed by the Peugeot and HPD LMP2. Remaining two LMP1 cars, the private Lola Aston Martin and Mansell's Ginetta-Zytek were now ahead of their LMP2 opponents, despite both ran slightly slower in previous sessions. As for the GT classes, in the GT1 the Larbre car easily prevailed the Austrian FS effort but only rarely match the top of the GT2 cars where various Ferraris and Porsches featured, namely the teams IMSA and Felbermayr-Proton among the Porsches and CRS and AF Corse from the Ferrari squads.

The Sunday's morning qualifying sessions confirmed what previous day's night session foreshadowed. Peugeot was the only of the fastest four cars on the track during the first half of the session and easily led the results sheets. But later when both Rebellion Lolas took the track, both of them passed the Peugeot soon. Both Lola were on track only 4 laps while the Peugeot, which returned back to the track in an attempt to grab the pole position again, could not achieve this success within twelve laps. Even more impressive performance was then shown by leading LMP2 HPD (Honda Performance Development = former Acura) car, which set overall pole position after only three full laps on the track. It was the first ever LMP2 pole on the European Le Mans Series scene.

During the post-qualifying press conference the pole man Danny Watts from the Strakka Racing confirmed that their objective is not a fight for overall positions but only for the LMP2 class honours. He probably had no idea that those two battles would merge into a single battle during the second half of the race, which was by then completely dominated by LMP2 cars. Watts also stated that LMP1 cars, which are much faster on straight, would overtake him after the start but he would concentrate on the LMP2 opposition. While the start really occurred as Danny predicted and he lost three positions before entering the first curve, he could hardly expect that not only his team would feature at the top of the results sheets and that LMP2 cars will take entire podium but moreover LMP2 contenders would take full top 6 places ahead the best placed pair of LMP1 cars.

Back to the early part of the race, when still dominated by LMP1 cars. It was a very nice battle between Rebellion Lola no.13 which took the lead from the beginning, followed by Peugeot and another Rebellion Lola no.12. All three cars ran in this order entire first stint, originally very closely matched, but once they started to lap slower cars, the distance between them became more flexible depending on delays behind slower cars. There were very early problems at one of the OAK Racing Pescarolos when the car no.24 was hit by another LMP2 and spun. When recovered, Matthieu Lahaye, who started the car, went to the pits to check the car. But he still continued unlapped. At this time, reporter's wife, actually following the first car race in her life, became sad as she had chosen this car to be her favourite. By that time really nobody expected that Lahaye and the team owner Jacques Nicolet would take a place on the overall podium. What a great race for them, making my wife quite happy.

In the meantime, while Mansell's Ginetta-Zytek struggled among better LMP2 cars, Vanina Ickx starting in Signature Lola Aston Martin from the last spot due to the tyre change ran very well and it did not take too long to catch the Ginetta. During the first series of pit stops, Peugeot took the lead, not only because it stayed longer on the track but it maintained the lead even after own pit stop because the Peugeot crew was simply several seconds quicker than that of Rebellion. But Boullion who replaced Belicchi in no.13 was also quicker that the Peugeot driven by Sarrazin and within a few laps he was very close behind. Unfortunately during one of overtaking manoeuvre a LMP2 Lola Coupe crossed his line and both car spun. Since then the difference between the two was about the main finish straight. Lola number 12 was another hundreds of meters back but it was soon to be delayed by a longer pit stop leaving the third spot to LMP2 leading HPD Strakka Racing, which was however replaced by ASM Ginetta-Zytek that spent much less time in the pits at this phase of the race.

Later in the middle race, the Rebellion Lola was somewhat delayed in the pits as well but still kept second one lap behind the leading Peugeot. During the fourth hour the Lola no.13 was in trouble again and until then well running Lola Aston Martin of team Signature took second. Unfortunately soon after its regular pit stop the car turned to the pit lane only to be repaired for more than 40 minutes. By this time the Peugeot was almost 5 minutes ahead the second HPD and another two minutes ahead of ASM Ginetta-Zytek. Rebellion Lola was slowly recovering running 5th eight minutes behind the leader. It was then capable of overtaking so far fourth running OAK Racing Pescarolo no.24 but at the beginning of the lap 124 rear wheels of the Lola completely locked turning the car and causing a safety car period, the second one in the entire race. The first safety car period was caused by the second Austrian Saleen GT1, which ended in the tyre barriers after the brakes failed at the end of the main straight. At the same place the Rebellion Lola was found stopped as well but fortunately not crashed. Only five laps later the leading Peugeot went to the pits, returned back to a one more lap and then ended up in the garage. This actually led to the situation that none of the LMP1 survived without a major problems and this opened the race completely for the LMP2 cars, something that might be called LMP1 the next year, according to the new rules. The HPD was leading just a single lap (130th) to leave the way to the ASM Ginetta-Zytek. This was more or less caused by different pit stop strategy; otherwise the HPD looked clearly to have an advantage over the Ginetta. The Peugeot returned after 40 minutes but not repaired. It ran very slow on the straights, presumably no gear shift functionality available. But it kept lapping at 2:20 pace, some 45 seconds a lap slower than when at the race pace. The intention was to cover enough laps to be classified at the end of the race. After about 20 painful laps it turned to garage again only to appear for the final race lap to cross the finish line. Points for fourth place in LMP1 and dead-last overall might be very valuable for the final championship standings anyway. With only one race missing in Silverstone, and with factories of Audi, Peugeot and Aston Martin, it might not be easy even for the quick Oreca car to win the championship there.

So with the Peugeot demise the race turned into LMP2 exhibition, which after further short delays of Mansell's Ginetta-Zytek occupied top six positions. When the race settled in the final hour, it was clearly HPD no.42, Ginetta-Zytek no.40 and Pescarolo no.24. The next position belonged to the LMP2 championship leader RML Lola Coupe HPD. The LMP1 was now safely led by the Mansell squad but they did not improve overall. In fact from running 4th overall they dropped to running 7th overall in the finish. On the other side recovering and well running Rebellion Lola no.12 and about ten laps before the finish, it finally overtake all GT2 cars and finished 8th. By this time another prototype class, the Formula Le Mans, which raced separately from LMS last year, almost completely faded away, the best car being placed in the third ten more than 30 minutes behind the overall leaders. While top GT2 cars were still among top 10, there was another quickly recovering prototype catching them in the final minutes of the race. It was the second OAK Racing Pescarolo no.35, which moved to 10th ahead of CRS Ferrari no.91 (Tim Mullen/Andrew Kirkaldy) in penultimate lap and then ahead of the GT2 winner Felbermayr-Proton Porsche no.77 (Richard Lietz/Marc Lieb) in the final lap. This Pescarolo spent a lot of time in the pits during the earlier stages of the race (lap 20) and lost almost twenty minutes.

Considering a generally worse entry the race turned up to be rather interesting and we would not mind if Hungaroring was on the LMS schedule next year again, though traditional Nürburgring or our home Brno track, which were in consideration for this date in previous years, would be preferable, the Hungarian track proved it can host such race like the Le Mans Series, which is very long and contains twice more cars than Formula 1. One thing that did not make us too happy was a fact that while photographer shuttle buses did a great service, they were available only in the inside of the track, so most of the photos shows only right side of the cars. When we finally found a good place from the outside and planned it for the warm up, after finding a good position and taking a couple of photos, the session was stopped and later cancelled at all. Next year, it all might be better; a question is only what the entry list would be in non-LMIC LMS races, with arrival of the new FIA GT2 Endurance Championship and continuing crisis conditions. Let's hope LMS will survive all this and races outside Belgium and England would be at least as good as this one.