The annual 2010-11 seasons of Grand Touring Amateur League(GTAL), Masters of Endurance(MoE) and LFS Endurance Series(LFSES) came to an end recently.
TEM got 8th in 2011 GTAL, after going not so far from the title in a mega close season. 7th in class in the prestigious Masters of Endurance, with a maiden podium as a bonus. A double crown(drivers champ’ and GT500 teams’ championship) in LFSES, a league that unfortunately suffered massively from interrest drops.
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Grand Touring Amateur League – Rounds 6 and 7
Last website update on GTAL came after round 5(out of 7), in which Oskari Rinne and Yann Laprevotte took a well deserved podium. Round 6, the 6 Hours of Kyoto GP Long was set to be a much harder round, due to its very FXR-unfriendly nature. Especially since the one-off Earthdreams-Leucat livery didn’t give luck to the Osku-Yann duo in qualifying, with a very poor 24th place due to a roll in the second session. No fear, however. Osku and Yann managed to pull a classic charge through the field, greatly helped by a spot-on-strategy. The TEM car eventually climbed from 24th to 4th, and finished only a few seconds from the mpower-DRUNK Team group fighting for 2nd. Some disappointment for the squad however, as second place was clearly possible without a pop-up occuring in the 5th stint. Still, this was probably TEM’s best ever GTAL performance at this date. You can read a detailed review of that race in Osku’s and Yann’s posts on LFS Forum.
Tiger Express came to the final round(12 Hours of Blackwood GP) 7th at the championship, with a mathematical – but very tiny – title chance. However, the main aim was to get a championship top 5. This time, the Yann-Oskari duet was completed by new recruits Chris Vourliotis(doing his first ever endurance race) and David Jundt. All was looking good during the first two stint, with Chris holding a bottom top 10 position, until the Greek’s PC crashed just before the two hours mark. TEM lost 3 laps in the incident, and rejoined near last position. A great shame, as the team had pace, which is what Yann proved right afterwards, following the leaders’ pack and unlapping himself for a few laps in his first stints. The team still managed to climbed to 12th, greatly helped by the huge amount of incidents occuring in that race. Not enough to satisfy the team however, as a position between 6th and 8th was possible without the PC crash.
Tommy Ostgaard’s Team Identity took the championship with a very small margin on DRUNK Team, Sonicrealms Racing, The Danish Racing Team and GraVT Racing, in an extremely close season(7 different winners in 7 races). The Tigers eventually finished 8th at the championship. Still very disappointing, as without round 3, 6 and 7’s technical problems, the team would have been extremely close to the top, maybe even champions. But of course, it is stupid to pretend that as almost every single team top 10 team could have the same talk, considering how close and incident filled this season has been. Moreover, TEM has often been been outpaced by most of their championship rivals. Looking at the bright side, however, the team has managed to pull a fantastic recovery after two awful opening round: from 20th to 8th at the championship, even making up 5 points on the lead position within the last 5 rounds(!). For the record, TEM has also been the only team scoring three top 5 in a row this season, with Team Inferno.
A big thanks to the administration and the other teams for making this season as much thrilling and fun. It has probably been the most enjoyable endurance season TEM has ever taken part so far.
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Masters of Endurance – Rounds 4 to 6
The team was also involved in the prestigious Masters of Endurance league in the meantime. TEM came stronger from its difficult maiden 24 hours race in round 3, with a surprise podium in round 4(6 Hours of South City). This was mainly thanks to ringer Chris Ford, who pulled a great qualifying performance(4th), and two great opening stints, settling in 3rd behind championship contenders ineX and spdo. Timo Höfer and Yann Laprevotte then only had to control CoRe Racing’s return to take 3rd, and TEM’s first ever MoE podium.
Round 5(6 Hours of Fern Bay Black) saw Masters of Endurance first ever visit to the Jamaican roller-coaster style track. Though it wasn’t very suiting TEM’s XRR, Chris Vourliotis, Yann Laprevotte, Lims Chebbi and Karl Raudsepp took a decent 6th out of 10th. The latter even got the squad’s best lap-time in the penultimate lap, for his official endurance debults. Meanwhile, Liane Solfrank finished 8th and last finisher with the one-round entry Epic Reunion.
The final round(6 Hours of Kyoto National) was set to be a good race for the XRR. The team didn’t capitalise on that during qualifying, with the last time. However, Karl and Yann pulled a great climb early in the race, passing Hellenic Racing and Coquest on track, and holding 5th place before half way point. Unfortuantely the second half was harder for David Jundt and Tom Parker: 2 punctures and a spin made the team drop to 8th.
Overall, it has been quite a difficult season for TEM. The 7th place gained at the GT2 standings isn’t very representative of the team’s season, as it was mainly due to the disappointing turn-up rate than everything else. But still, Tiger Express managed to finish all 6 races(for a total of 60 hours of racing!), which was the squad’s main aim before the season start. For the record, the championship was taken by ineX Racing in GT1, and spdo Racing in GT2.
Rounds 4 and 5 Gallery(by Michael Booth)
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LFS Endurance Series Season 5 – Rounds 5 and 6
Small mention to the LFS Endurance Series. Yann did 4th out of 8 in round 5(3 Hours of Fern Bay Black), though he had the pace for the podium, if he wasn’t taken out at turn 1. Then, the Chris-Yann duet took 3rd/5 in round 6(3 Hours of Aston North). With the last round being cancelled due to the poor attendance, TEM took the GT500 crown, and its lead driver Yann Laprevotte the overall drivers’ championship. No real joy however, considering how the championship ended.
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TEM will be back to business in endurance racing on June 18th, as the 5th annual season of the International GT Championship will kick off at Kyoto International(KY31). Tiger Express will take part in its mighty Earthdreams bus, and hopes to improve its overall 12th place gained in the 2010 season.
