Race 4 Reuben

Another 24 hour in the bag. 1st in hire elite and 3rd overall. Great effort from the team throughout 🏁🏆

🇫🇷 2025 Le Mans 24 Hours Race Report: 🇫🇷

Last weekend the team headed to Le Mans, the home of 24 hour racing, for the first time since 2019!

Our team consisted of Paul White, Owen Burton, Alan Lowes, and Andrew Delahunty, with Dan Crossley being our reserve. With this driver lineup, our aim was to at least finish on the podium, if not better. It was clear that it was going to be very hot throughout the whole weekend, so keeping cool was going to be important!

Friday practice didn't go smoothly, having spent a lot of time in the mechanical bay, we didn't have a chance to try out what was fixed as the session finished before we could get back out on track.

On to Saturday and practice went more smoothly, and we were more confident going into qualifying and the race. Qualifying went well and we were starting a very respectable P3 for the race!

So the clock hit 12pm, and it was time for the race! Owen was out first for us and managed to hold P3 through the first lap. From there, us and the top 2 teams were pulling a nice gap to the karts behind.

Around 50 minutes into the first stint we were over 10 seconds in front of P4, when we had our first issue of the race. Suddenly there was a lack of power in the kart. We thought about pitting but decided to stay out as the problem seemed to sort itself out. The problem kept recurring multiple times, seemingly an issue with the throttle not opening at certain times.

Eventually we decided to pit as we were losing too much time, the issue being that a large stone from the kart ahead had landed on the throttle cable, meaning we were not getting full throttle. We only lost one minute in the pits, which all things considered, was not the end of the world.

Over the next six hours Paul, Alan and Owen put in mega stints to get us up to P2 overall, one lap behind the leaders, so we were in a good position heading into the maintenance stop.

Just after the maintenance stop we had an issue with the engine. We brought the kart in to the maintenance bay, but once we were out on track again, the problem immediatly re-appeared. We then had another issue which required an engine change.

These issues unfortunatley dropped us from P2 overall to P21 (with some teams still needing to do maintenance stops). All we could do now was continue to do our best and finish as high up as we possibly could.

Throughout the night Andy, Alan and Dan all did a mega job to get us back to p11 with five hours of the race to go.

What was clear now though was that the new engine wasn't performing well at this point of the race, with us being at least 6 tenths slower per lap than we should have been.

For the rest of the race though we kept it clean and continued to move through the order through a mix of overtakes and other teams' misfortunes.

In the end we crossed the line in P7 overall, which all things considered was the maximum we could have achieved after our issues in the night.

It was a frustrating day at the office for us, but we are all proud of the team! We know that without those issues we would've been in contention for the win, but that's motorsport for you!

Our focus now turns to the British 24 Hours on 9th-10th August, where we are looking to defend our title from last year, and go for our third overall hire victory!

Thank you for all your support! 🧡

P7 in the 2025 Le Mans 24 hours.

It was a race of ups and downs, one that we had the pace to win if we weren't unlucky, but unfortunately the racing gods decided otherwise!

Thanks for all your support this weekend and always! 🧡

One hour to go of the Le Mans 24 hours.

We have made our way to P8, but our engines are unfortunately down on power.

Andy is doing his best out there to take the chequered flag!