ALMS Round 10 – Petite Le Mans  Atlanta, Georgia

The anticipation among the whole team was running high with the debut of the new Mazda powered Lola Coupe. Pre race testing started the weekend before the race with both drivers sharing the driving duties and familiarising themselves with their new enclosed environment. A spin by Ben on the Sunday curtailed practice but the car was soon fixed and ready for race week. Ben was enjoying the new car and working closely with Mike (his race engineer) and the guys from Lola (Dave and Julian) the car steadily improved with each session. Night practice on the Thursday saw them running as high as 4th in class and 10th overall. The Friday qualifying would show just how good the improvements had been. Ben had the job of qualifying and spent the session feeling the limits and slowly pushing the car faster and faster. By the end of the session he was in the 1 min 8 secs and happy to be less than 2 seconds from class pole. The car was feeling really good and Ben felt there was still more to come. In what had really been a week of development and race prep the whole team where delighted to be so close to the front of the pack.

 Come race day, everyone was eagerly awaiting the race debut of the beautiful Lola Coupe, unfortunately it never happened.!! The morning warm up saw the end of the race weekend for the No 8. In what should be just a system check and a Warm Up,  Gerrado thought it necessary to push the car quicker than he had gone all week and unfortunately lost it going into turn 1. The resultant spin ended with the car buried into the tyre wall and the rear end damaged beyond repair in the short time remaining until the start of the race. So after a momentous effort by the crew to prepare the new car everyone was left feeling somewhat disappointed by the anti-climax of packing up while the rest of the grid was preparing to do battle for the 10 hour race.

However it is not the Mazda or B-K  way to give up and already their enthusiasium is growing for the final round at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

Ben is convinced the car is going to be super competitive and is desperate to get back behind the wheel and prove it’s capabilities.

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