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Adrian's Le Mans Blog

 

I have received a lot of questions from fans after our problems at Le Mans and I wanted to bring you up to date on our current situation.

 

The AMR-One chassis is, in general, a good chassis and it seems to be working well mechanically. There may be hidden problems but, since we have had very limited running time, we really don’t know yet. In my opinion, I would say 90% of the problems we are experiencing right now are with the engine.

 

This engine is such a new concept. It is not a V6. It is an inline, six-cylinder, direct- injected turbocharged engine. In theory, it has a lot of potential but it is obviously going through a very critical development phase and the team has experienced a lot of issues in that respect. Because of this, they haven’t been able to work on increasing the engine’s power so, apart from the reliability problems we are having, the car is slow.

 

From a driver’s point of view, it has been extremely frustrating and not just for me but for the entire team – the other drivers, engineers and mechanics. But it is not from a lack of hard work. I was telling Woody, the crew chief, that I take my hat off to him and his guys for working flat out since this project started. They haven’t had much time with their families and the schedule has been brutal for them.

 

This is a team that has a lot of experience and they have the expertise to overcome the issues we are having. It is just taking a long time.

 

At the moment, we don’t know which races we are going to run because the issues we have are beyond going racing right now. We have been very limited on mileage and haven’t been able to develop the engine to its full potential.

 

Obviously, I believe in the team but we need to overcome these issues as soon as possible because we have sponsors and commitments. We cannot continue to develop an engine without a good baseline and right now we haven’t been able to achieve that and there is no time to develop at the pace we have been going. Otherwise, the year will be gone.

 

It is sad to see but on the positive side Aston Martin and Prodrive have always been very strong and competitive. They just haven’t been in a situation at this level before but I am sure they will over come the current obstacles.

 

David Richards, the Chairman of Aston Martin and Prodrive apologized to everyone involved and will have an update on next steps in a few weeks.

 

Regarding our situation, David was quoted in the media as saying: “I have been full time in racing some 30 years, and in the main we’ve had some great successes, but we’ve also had some difficult births. I think we can describe AMR-One as a difficult birth, more challenging than usual. I’m an ultimate optimist in my life, but I think we all knew how difficult this would be: a brand-new chassis, brand-new engine, without the resources of a large car company. But ultimately I believe we will be proven correct.”

 

To the fans, I don’t have much more to tell you other than to be patient. We hope to have a good resolution to all of this so we can go racing soon and be competitive.

 

Thank you for your support.
Adrián

 

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