[LM24] Andy Wallace Racing for Holland Le Mans contract

[Trebor]

At the launch of the Racing for Holland season at Zandvoort today, it was announced that Andy Wallace will partner Jan Lammers and John Bosch in the lead Racing for Holland Dome S101 Judd.
The team’s other entry will be driven by Beppe Gabbiani, Felipe Ortiz and Tristan Gommendy.

Wallace was anticipating racing with Dyson in their MG-Lola ‘entry’, but that effort has been put back a year, so he’s found a seat with the potential giant killers from the Netherlands.

“Jan has Michelin tyres, they’ve done a lot of wind tunnel testing thanks to their excellent relationship with the Dome factory,” explains Andy Wallace, “and they’ve been doing straight line testing at an airfield runway, which confirms their excellent lift to drag ratio for this year.” Wallace is clearly up for the challenge, and early indications are that the black and white cars are going to perform even better than the single entry did last year.

Andy Wallace won Le Mans with Lammers in 1988 – the Englishman’s 24 Hours debut, of course. The pair won Daytona together, again for Jaguar, in 1990 – and they drove together for Toyota at Le Mans in 1992. Eleven years later, they’re back together - although they did share the Champion Audi at Sebring last year.

Porsche were the favourites at Le Mans in ’88, but Lammers, Wallace and Dumfries saw them off in one of the greatest 24 Hours ever. Can Lammers and Wallace challenge the (Audi-Bentley) favourites this year?

[KA]

The Dome probably doesn't have the reliability to run trouble-free for long enough, and I don't know how John Bosch will compare with Lammers & Wallace (I only really know of Bosch as a rally driver),but I'd certainly expect them to be well in contention in qualifying and the early part of the race.

[Marcel ten Caat]

John Bosch (39) drove internationally in karts, before winning the British Formula Ford championship. He performed strongly in the European F3 championship, but had to switch to rallying after a serious crash. John quickly became known as of the best drivers in Europe and even won a world championship round in Indonesia. Returning to roadracing last year, he won the European Ferrari 360 championship.

[FIRE]

I think Bosch is capable to get a good result and as an ex-rally driver he's used to driver at dark. He's also able to bring some money to the team (he owns some Ferrari F1 cars).

Maybe a better name for Lammers' team is Racing for the World because with 4 non-Dutch drivers and for the 2nd car mechanics from Belgium.

[danhx]

They will certainly be pecking at the top runners in qualifying, but due to the inherent fragility of the high-reving V10 they have to run the wick too far down during the race to be able to keep up. All the MG (Judd) engines at Le Mans last year made it to the finish, so i would expect them to be decently reliable this year if they can avoid contact and mistakes. Bosch is the that would seem most suspect to that but from what those above have said it sounds like he'll be up to the task of keeping out of trouble at the very least. The bane of the Dome chassis this year will again be that engine. Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic customer engine, but compared to the Audi and Bentley powerplants it just loses too much between qualifying and the race.

Question: Is RFH sticking with the GV4, or are they bumping it up to the 5 liter?

[Sean Crockett]

Originally posted by danhx
Question: Is RFH sticking with the GV4, or are they bumping it up to the 5 liter?

Surely the 5 litre would be a better bet if it fits as it must be under less stress than the 4 litre for a given output.

[danhx]

I haven't heard anything about them using the GV5 though, and a lot of teams have stuck with the smaller version.

[FIRE]

Originally posted by danhx
I haven't heard anything about them using the GV5 though, and a lot of teams have stuck with the smaller version.

Indeed, I think also they use the GV4.

Mugen offered RfH to use their engine but because RfH wasn't able to do a lott of testing they decided to stick with the GV4 engine.

[paul-collins]

Frankly, having heard about the use of Mugen power last year, it was a wise choice. I've heard that the drivers were told to shift at a pretty low rev, just as the power was starting to come on.

[danhx]

Sticking with the MG was probably a good idea. The Mugen engine COULD have been pretty good, but i heard that when it ran in the Panoz LMP07 chassis they never got anywhere close to the red line. The engine technicians were very conservative never let the powerplant's true capabilities show. It was actually first tested in a Dome chassis, but i think that was just a preliminary shake down and not much happened between the two beyond that aside from the afformentioned proposition by Mugen.

[BSchneiderFan]

The Mugen engine will be at La Sarthe, though, in the Kondo Dome.

[danhx]

Ahh, I didn't catch that on the entry list. Thanks for pointing that out. I had thought that they had tested the engine in an RfH chassis, but now i'm guessing it was the Kondo.