Monday 9th March 2009

Lola-Aston Testing for Le Mans

Postcard from Paul Ricard

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This terrific set of images dropped into our mailbox this morning courtesy of Aston Martin Racing.

The pics reveal the team’s Lola-Aston V12 Le Mans racers tearing-up the track during the first official session of Le Mans testing at the Paul Ricard circuit in France yesterday. The two-day test - which continues today – is our first chance to drool over the evocative blue and orange Gulf liveried LMP1 Astons ‘in the flesh’, and don’t they look the part!

According to Autosport’s newshound on the ground at Paul Ricard, the cars have been running well with no problems. Aston Martin Racing boss George Howard-Chappell told the magazine things were ‘very good so far’.

‘It’s really good to have two brand new cars razzing round the track without problems. The cars don’t seem too bad straight out of the box and we’ve hardly touched them since we arrived,’ he said.

Autosport also spoke to Stefan Mucke, the first Aston driver to get to grips with the new car in yesterday morning’s session.

‘The car feels really good and we’ve only had a few little issues. The time was nothing special; the important thing is to get all the systems running correctly,’ Mucke told Autosport.

For the record, Mucke’s best session one time of 1:43.669 was more than 1sec behind the fastest Courage-ORECA car. Aston has promised us a full update on progress when the session has ended.

 

[knighty]

Enge performed some rather serious modifications to the 007 car later in the day......David Richards has now confimed the chassis has been written off......check these pics

http://www.planetlemans.com/2009/03/08/lms-paul-ri...

There is now a lot of speculation over Lola now supplying the spares as AM/Prodrive have right royally pissed off Lola via claiming AM/Prodrive heavily re-designed the Lola chassis when they have done nothing of the sort.......they just paid Lola to give it a nose-job re-style

Edited by knighty on Monday 9th March 11:13

[FourWheelDrift]

knighty said:

.......they just pail Lola to give it a nose-job re-style

Looks like they paid Enge to give it another nose job.

[cvegas]

Fabulous looking car. The darker blue across the top of the cockpit makes it look like the car has a mohican!
Wallpaper sized images would be nice.

[Truckosaurus]

Regarding the 1sec gap to the Oreca car, it seems that Oreca were running the larger 2008 spec wings making the comparison somewhat moot.

[zac510]

cvegas said:

Fabulous looking car. The darker blue across the top of the cockpit makes it look like the car has a mohican!
Wallpaper sized images would be nice.

Copy that, can we have wallpaper of the week early?

[roland82]

I can wait for Le Mans this year, I was so happy when Peugeot turned up to challenge Audi so I supported them. I think its time for a change though.

That car does look sexy and I bet it sounds even better.

[mk1fan]

I'm not going this year, too much Alpine fun booked instead.

[dpbird90]

A bit late guys:
http://www.pistonheads.com/xforums/topic.asp?h=0&a...

[Lordbenny]

I don't know much about LP1 sports cars. Is it me or does it look VERY much like the Bentley that campaigned a few years ago?

[Gatso Hater]

Can we have the sunset picture as pic of the week please;)

[fastfreddy]

knighty said:

Enge performed some rather serious modifications to the 007 car later in the day......David Richards has now confimed the chassis has been written off......check these pics

http://www.planetlemans.com/2009/03/08/lms-paul-ri...

There is now a lot of speculation over Lola now supplying the spares as AM/Prodrive have right royally pissed off Lola via claiming AM/Prodrive heavily re-designed the Lola chassis when they have done nothing of the sort.......they just paid Lola to give it a nose-job re-style

Oh dear, I bet they weren't expecting that. That's one of the safest circuits in the world as far as car damage goes. Mr Enge isn't going to be popular.

[Ricepilot]

dpbird90 said:

A bit late guys:
http://www.pistonheads.com/xforums/topic.asp?h=0&a...

And even that was a bit late...

This was posted early hours Saturday morning.

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a... (Halfway down the page)

[dinkel]

Lola and Aston Martin:



I hope they have more luck than this car had.

[Racingdude009]

Is it going to Sebring ?

[Killer2005]

Love this pic

[phn]

Looks lovely but whats the odds on them making it to the end of the race????

[Red Firecracker]

phn said:

Looks lovely but whats the odds on them making it to the end of the race????

I think they'll certainly get one car to the end, Lola make a very good P1 chassis. However, I don't think they'll be challenging for honours after the first 8 hours.

[mark3man]

dinkel said:

Lola and Aston Martin:



I hope they have more luck than this car had.

They raced out of the box with (almost) untried engines. One of the two has just finished a 4 year rebuild. Look for it at period events this summer.

[dougc]

Killer2005 said:

Love this pic

Available for widescreen desktops in hi-res here

http://www.dieselstation.com/cars/aston-martin-lmp...

[dinkel]

mark3man said:

dinkel said:

Lola and Aston Martin:



I hope they have more luck than this car had.

They raced out of the box with (almost) untried engines. One of the two has just finished a 4 year rebuild. Look for it at period events this summer.

I know. One of those cars is an original - currently in the UK and under preparation for AMOC - , the other seems to be a rep. A notorious Aston collector will campaign this beauty.