Road to Le Mans - Testing the New Engine

" For the last 5 years, Le Mans has been dominated by one car, the Audi R8. This goliath of German design and engineering has won 4 of the last 5 races. This year a small British team believes they can beat it, but it's going to be the fight of their life. It's the moment of truth for the one of the biggest decisions of Ian Bickerton's career."

" The set for the day is just to check the engine the down, check the gearbox, check the tires. Hope we've gonna warm up, and we can do some work."

" It's exactly 9 a.m., the track is open, and it's time for Creation's lead driver Nick Minassian to take out the car for it's first shakedown lap with the new Judd engine. He will be the eyes and ears of the engineering team out on the track."

" I'm part of the development of the car because I give information to the engineer, and engineers make the modification in the car to improve the car."

" You might get a cold oil a lot. If you do, don't make the revs above around 6,000."

" Nick knows there's a lot at stake for this one lap because after the new engine, second on the Bick's Christmas list was a new tire supply."

" We're hoping to pick some speed up with the tire, but it's mainly a reliability factor."

" For Nick, it will almost be like driving a completely new car. In the next few minutes, Nick will let Bicks know whether he thinks these major changes have been money well-spent."

" Okay Nick, straight round the back-end there. Give me a radio check on the corners around the circuit, please."

" Nick exits the pits cautiously. It's an ice cold track with cold tires and an unfamiliar engine."

" I don't like it Bill. [unk]"

" Nick pushes through the gears and is already passing 250 kilometers an hour on the longest straight. He's feeling the forces from the engine and listening to the sound of every gear change."

" Back in the pit, the 2-minute lap seems to last an eternity."

" Past the first hurdle, the engine works but how did it perform."

" That was a good feeling, first of all, the engine was --the car works so well."

" Nick is sent back out for a 5-lap spin, but almost immediately, he is on the radio."

" [unk]"

" He's got an oil pressure warning light on the dashboard, an advance warning of potentially fatal engine failure. The first lap euphoria comes crashing down. Back in the garage, the engineers swarm around the car with their laptops, downloading data from the car's three onboard computers, which monitor and control the engine, the gearbox, and the rest of the car. The pressure mounts for an engine supplier, John Judd, to find the solution, but according to his data, the engine is running smoothly."

" I'm looking at a complete lap of magnitude from the first corner to the last corner. This is the driver's throttle trace. That's full throttle there, then off the throttle down the bottom. The yellow line is the oil pressure trace and again that's looking remarkably good."

" It's in fact the problem is not with the engine itself, but with the electronics that monitor it. But they can't pinpoint the problem, so it's back out on the track for some traditional engineering trial and error."

" and the alarm threshold has been set in PSI. There's something that stopped computer translation I think."

" It should be a simple fix to get the car's computers talking to each other again. That can wait until they get back to England, but the next crisis comes. A sudden drop in power makes the car impossible to drive. Back at the garage, the investigation begins. It's engine strip-down time, but Nick has a theory."

" But it seems like there is nothing [unk] that one."

" [unk] Yeah."

" Sure enough, close inspection of the fuel injectors reveal some severe clogging, but John forgotten to pack the spare. Hundred of miles from the factory John Judd is forced to improvise his fuel injection cleaning technique, but he won't find out today whether he's fixed the problem because the track has now closed and time has run out. For Ian Bickerton, it's been a wasted day. Ten grand of his testing budget down the drain, and for the mechanics, it means a late night at the garage, rebuilding, cleaning, checking, and rechecking everything on the car. There is no room for error tomorrow."