Osborne Motorsports - Team update
May 18th, 2008 Posted in Australia, Motorsports, Toyota
Osborne Motorsports team driver Stu Jones has been in touch to give a travel update as the lads get ready to depart for their journey to the Nürburgring for the 24 hour race. The race will take place next weekend and the team will be flying out to Frankfurt tomorrow afternoon. They will arrive early Tuesday morning and take the short drive to Nürburg. Both Stu Jones and late addition to the driving line up, Simon Evans, will be making their Nürburgring 24 hour debuts. This means they are required to take part in a two day ‘new drivers’ course. Stu, a tarmac rally and club circuit privateer, reckons it’s a bit of a laugh that he will start the race on a level playing field with Evans, a full-time professional driver who is well known to the tight knit Australian rally community
Day one of the training course will be theory and day two will see track action, but in road cars only. Thursday is a free day for the team and if all goes well they will make the trek to nearby Cologne to check out the Toyota Formula 1 headquarters. Friday is a practice day. With around 230 cars taking part in the race finding clear track in the first 90 minute session will be tough! This is the only practice session during full daylight and the guys are expecting only two laps each. The ‘night’ session starts at 7pm and lasts for three and half hours and it is hoped they can squeeze in around six laps each. At least the long European summer evening should provide quite good light for most of the session. Learning the track in the dark would raise the degree of difficulty just a tad!
The race starts at 3pm on Saturday (11pm AEST) and finishes at the same time on Sunday. With any luck I’ll be able to provide a few real time updates as Stu and I have lined up a few times for SMS communication during the race.
For more detail on what is involved in sending an Australian team over for the Nürburgring 24 hour race, click HERE.
4 Responses to “Osborne Motorsports - Team update”
By John McIntyre on May 22, 2008
To Stu Jones- go well and go safely we will be watching and/or reading on Saturday.
From the in-laws in Sydney.
By Liam on May 23, 2008
John, not sure if you’ve heard the issues the guys have had, but, for a moment, it looked like the car wasn’t going to be delivered the track at all. Their ship was running late! Fortunately everything has been sorted out and the car arrived at the track last night. A very close call.
I’ll post a more detailed update later tonight.
By Michael on May 30, 2008
A brief post until Liam gets back with more details. (This is a summation of info from a couple of sources)
The car finally arrived 18:30 on Thursday where the team then worked on it till 0200 (am).
They got back to the track 10:00 Friday where they put in a couple of practice sessions. The first went OK, but the second resulted in a “dipstick tube failure”. It turns out the #1 conrod removed it from the engine block. This is, apparently, ungood.
The team replaced the engine, finally finishing at 04:00 Saturday then apparently qualified for a start. (when and how, I do not know.) The team was back at the track 09:00 the same morning.
Some early ignition problems forced an unscheduled pitstop or two, but the ‘rolla cruised around like a champ for the next 22 hours getting up to 88th position outright and 7th in class.
Unfortunately, that’s where it went pear-shaped. At about the 22nd hour, the front left hand brake disk disintegrated puting the car into the wall and removing the wheel completely.
They somehow got the car back to the pits but they were unable to get it repaired in time. I can only imagine the disappointment - going all that way, overcoming the problems, having such capable (and apparently quick) drivers to have it end so close to the finish.
I believe this is Colin’s first endurance DNF for many years. I wish you better luck next year mate.
By Liam on May 30, 2008
Thanks for the info there Michael. I have a couple of updates already posted, follow the link below:
http://www.ausringers.com/category/toyota