During the weekend of july 16th 2011, the first round of RC Le Mans Series kicked off with the inaugurel 6 hours of Fuji. The team has entered 2 Corvette C6.Rs in the GT1 class and expanded it's driver line up for this campaign. Koen V and Steve B were both recruited to help run #25 corvette togheter with Steven P, while Davy L and Nicky DF will perform their duties on the #26 Corvette.
Sadly, due to technical difficulties the GT1 class lost the two Saleen S7Rs entries by World Connect Competition and 05 Motorsports before and during the formation lap.
The race seemed to be doomed early on for the #26 Corvette, when 10-15 minutes into the race a powersteering failure sent NDF into the barriers causing some serious damage to the right front wheel, luckily the car managed to restart and was able limp back into the pits, where it lost 2-3 laps on the leading ACE Motorsports Aston Martin and #25 lSd Corvette, while damage to the wheel was beeing repaired.
Moreso, the mechanics were unable to resolve the power steering (ffb) issues, and the #26 was resigned to the chase without power steering.
KV running the first stint for the #25 car, on his first official outing with the Corvette, toke it cautious and took his time to adjust to the car while setting a good pace in second place with an eye on the points and immmediatly did a double stint, taking the #25 car into the second hour of the race.
Meanwhile DL had taken over the #26 car for the second hour, and was running a consistant stint, when, with still 10 orso laps to go in his stint, he was punted off by the GT Omega P1 prototype entry, when it's driver failed to overtake and instead simply ran into the back of the Corvette. This caused heavy damage to the left rear wheel and bodywork of the Corvette, leaving it with only one option and try to limp back to the pits. A driverswap was immediatly done with NDF taking over the Car.
Meanwhile more drama in the pits, when KV came in the pits with the #25 Corvette for a planned driverswap and the car failed to start when SP took over, leaving them to resign from the race after only 73 laps.
NDF came out of pitlane, loosing yet another lap to the ACE motorsports Aston Martin in first, due the repair time needed to fix the rear left from the prototype collision, but drove a very consistant pace and managed to get a lap back from the Aston.
Nearing the end of the 4th hour of the race, and 2nd stint of DL, the Ace motorsport Aston seemed to have some trouble, allowing the #26 Corvette to catch up abit and after a very long time in the pits, the #26 Corvette manage to bring himself on the same lap as the Aston, after wich DL came in and handed over the car to NDF, who managed to come out of pitlane still in the same lap as the Aston. The lSd team were making themself ready for the battle to come, when all of a sudden we heard that the Aston was involved in an accident and had to retire.
Now leading the GT1 class, as sole remaining GT1, the #26 car crew set their minds to dodging the prototypes in the dark night and bringing the car home safely with still roughly 2 hours to go in the race.
DL and NDF did just that, and brought the car across the line under the checkered flag, and claimed its first class win in the champiopnship, bringing home with them 20 points !
race results can be found HERE
The entire photoalbum can be seen HERE
