Oak Racing Wins ELMS Donington Six Hours

Oak Racing was surely glad that it brought two of the 13 cars in the European Le Mans Series Six Hours of Donington. After leading almost half the race, the #24 Oak Racing Morgan-Judd lost time to spin, then a penalty for speeding on pit lane, then a gearshift malfunction which sent to car to the garage for a new ECU.

Luckily for Oak, the #35 Morgan-Nissan took the lead on lap 70. The second Oak car lost the lead in the pits after a wreck brought out the safety car at the three-hour mark, then retook it on lap 201 when the #19 Greaves Motorsports Zytec Z11SN-Nissan pitted.

The Oak car never again surrendered the lead. The team made no errors, used good strategy (like taking only left-side tires at their last stop to get back out on track faster) and drivers Olivier Pla, Bertrand Baguette, and Dimitri Enjalbert never put a wheel wrong while the competition suffered from driver errors and mechanical failures.

The championship leading #46 Thiriet by TDS Oreca-Nissan finished second after running near the back of the P2 field for the first half of the race. After the safety car period, the Thiriet car took the lead, and ran up front for the rest of the race.

The #18 Murphy7 Prototypes team had an unfortunate day. Driver Warren Hughes spun the car, losing 12 seconds. When he brought the car to the pits the official observer ordered the team to take the nose off for an inspection, costing the team another dozen seconds.

The car was allowed to return to the race, but after it left the pits the race official decided the car needed a new nose because of some damaged louvers. This cost the team even more time on the next pit stop. The car finished third by eleven seconds.

The #10 Pecom Oreca-Nissan had a first lap accident and lost three laps, eventually finishing fifth. The #38 Jota Zytec-Nissan ran well until driver Simon Dolan spun hard into the tire wall, ending the team’s race.

The #1 Greaves Motorsport Zytec was another fast car with bad luck, running well until the closing hour when it lost as lot of time for a brake caliper repair. Endurance is a big part of endurance racing; speed is only part of the equation.

The #17 Status Grand Prix Lola-Judd also failed to endure, retiring with what was called an alternator problem after 45 laps.

Only two of the 13 entries retired; the rest made it to the finish of what was a surprisingly exciting race, despite the small field. For much of the race the top three cars were within four seconds of each other, and even when the #35 Oak Racing car opened a minute gap in the last hour, the race for the rest of the podium places was tight.

With only three GTE cars, one –Pro and two –Am, there was not a lot of close racing. The JMW Ferrari and IMSA Matmut Porsche took the Pro and Am wins, but the biggest part they played was giving the P2 drivers moving picks to hang up their opponents.

The Boutsen-Ginion LMPC Oreca FLM09 had the class to itself, and luckily made it to the finish to win, though it did lose some laps in the garage. The car cruised home 11th, 38 laps down—the last of the running cars.

A Great Series Wasting Away

The Six Hours of Donington showed that the ELMS has a very viable format—with P2 as the top class, the competition is as exciting as the P1-dominated races of the World Endurance Championship (maybe more so, now that Peugeot has dropped out and Toyota has not fully entered.)

The race also showed that ACO, the sanctioning body, needs to do more to support and promote the series. Already the Zolder round had to be cancelled because too few teams signed up, and the Donington grid of 13 cars was flat embarrassing. This is a series that has staged excellent, competitive endurance races at every event this year, and it might not live until next year if the organizers don’t inject some interest.

Like its North American counterpart ALMS, ELMS suffers horribly from a lack of interest by the ACO, which is totally focused on the WEC. The question then is, how will the WEC look in five years if the two feeder series fold?

With so many successful racing series in Europe, there are plenty of options for teams whose sponsors decide that a four-race schedule with 13-car grids is not a good investment. Any of these teams could by a GT3 Ferrari or Audi and be competing for podiums in BlancPain or GT1 World Championship. That would leave WEC with, well, 13-car grids.

Bad management and motor racing seem to go hand in hand. The politics is on a level with any neighborhood Homeowners’ Association, and the business acumen shown—well, the fact that few series seem to last more than a dozen years tells a lot.

Hopefully ACO and its new partner FIA can use the same kind of wisdom that has kept Formula One at the pinnacle of motorsports for fifty years, to pump up sports cars a little bit. Or maybe that is all Bernie Ecclestone’s doing, and when he retires …

Here’s hoping the next round of the European Le Mans Series, at Brno, has an entry list to match the quality of the competition.