The race, a curtain raiser for the following day’s World Endurance Championship event, was scheduled for three hours. However, heavy rain conditions initially brought out a safety car and then caused the race to be curtailed at 75 per cent distance.

In qualifying for the race, Oliver dominated the opposition with three laps, all of which would have been good enough for pole position. The best of these was eight tenths of a second faster than the opposition. Initially, Oliver settled into second position in the race. An accident brought out the safety car in the early stages and, with the rain falling, some of the other teams gambled by changing on to wet tyres. The Jota Zytek stayed out on slicks for a few more laps, meaning that it temporarily lost out when it eventually stopped for wets.

Oliver then relentlessly worked his way back up the field, taking the lead just into the second hour. At the end of his stint, when he pitted to hand over to Simon, he was 43 seconds ahead of the field. Running wide at Vale corner, Simon nudged the barrier and fell back to second place. Worsening conditions brought out the safety car for a second time roughly half way through the race. The lead car had to pit again, leaving Jota, with its superior race strategy back in the lead. There it remained until the weather conditions became such that the organisers called a halt to the race after 48 laps.

The Three Hours of Silverstone was the first race of 2013 European Le Mans Series. The championship continues at Imola, Italy on May 17-18 followed by the Red Bull Ring in Austria on July 19-20, the Hungaroring, Hungary (September 13-14) and Paul Ricard, France (September 27-28).

In addition to manufacturing its own V8 engines, Zytek is a European distributor and service centre for the highly successful Nissan VK45DE LMP2 power unit. Thus, Motul will also provide the recommended oils for these engines from Nismo, Nissan’s motorsport arm. All the fluids will be provided through Motul’s associate company MotulTech, including manufacturing oils.

Motul already has a strong relationship with Zytek through technical partnerships with two of its major customers, Greaves Motorsport and Jota Sport, both of which race the Zytek-Nissan Z11SN LMP2 sportscar. In 2011, Greaves won the LMP2 class at the Le Mans 24-hours and finished the season as the Le Mans Series champion. This year it has been joined by Jota, which took first place in class at the Spa-Francorchamps round of the World Endurance Championship. Both teams will be the beneficiaries of the extended working relationship between Zytek, Nismo and Motul

John Manchester, Operations Director of Zytek Engineering, said of the new partnership:  “We’re delighted to be working with Motul, a company with a very strong heritage and which has successfully taken part in many championships.  We have used many different lubricants in the past, across the different series for which we provide engines, and have been very impressed with the performance Motul’s oils showed. We hope that this new partnership between ourselves, which will be centered on the Nissan engines we provide to endurance sportscar racing teams, will help us with our product development and to achieve further success.”

Hervé Amelot, Motul Managing Director: “Based on the principle that there is no better laboratory than motorsports to prove the quality of its products, endurance racing has always been a key priority for the company. Our famous 300V 100 per cent synthetic lubricant has been constantly upgraded to become the reference lubricant for several decades on the racing scene and especially in endurance thanks to the 300V ‘Le Mans’, which has been specially formulated to face the severe conditions met in this extremely demanding discipline.”

Zytek Sales Enquiries
Steve Tremble, Zytek Automotive
Lancaster Road, Fradley Business Park, Fradley, Lichfield, Staff, WS13 8RY, UK
tel:+44 (0)1543 412789
steve.tremble@zytek.co.uk

That’s it. The Zytek’s stopped any challenge to their positions by being allowed to  push to the end.

I cannot believe the run that car 41 had. Christian Zugel, Ricardo Gonzalez and Elton Julian never put a foot wrong. Well done to the
Greaves team for getting both cars home.

Audis took all the podium places, with hybrid cars 1^st and 2^nd.

Here’s the results…LMP1
LMP2

Audi

Audi

Audi

Lola

Audi

HPD
HPD
Oreca

Oreca

Oreca

Lola

Zytek

Oreca

Morgan

Zytek

Oreca

There was one final bit of drama when a Porsche got a
puncture with 4mins to go. He got it to the pits, and got it round for its last
lap in time to be classified. There’s always something.

Hope you enjoyed it. I’m off to congratulate Greaves, and
then load up the truck.

Let’s do it again next year.

We’re loving the end of this race. Greaves appear to have allowed Martin Brundle and Ricardo Gonzalez to race to the end. With similar
spells from Lucas Ordonez and Elton Julian, they have set many new fastest laps for their respective cars. No.41 managed to eclipse their qualifying time by a massive amount.

We have 50mins left until the end of the race, they are in the window for their final stops now.

Greaves No.41 seem to have the pace to hold on to 5^th, but Martin Brundle still has to push to try to get 8^th place from the Signatech Oreca. Currently 20secs behind.

Try to catch it on tele.

I’m starting to feel quite depressed. It’s almost over for another year.

Anyway – as we had the safety car for most of the last hour, there is very little change. Most significant is the Signatech/Greaves battle.
Ordonez is currently 50 secs behind and closing. 8secs closer last lap.

Any last surprises with the weather? It’s warm and dry at the
moment, but there is a breeze that could bring in a nice surprise.

More in an hour (as long as the cars behave
themselves).

Is there more drama to come? Watch this space (or you could watch tele).

Unfortunately, Simon Dolan had an impact with a very unforgiving wall. He went backwards into the wall at high speed. Simon managed
to get the car back to the pits (memories of Alan McNish in 2004). I saw Simon afterwards, not to talk to, but he seemed ok.

The team are taking their time, to see if there is a safe and legal way of getting the car to the finish.

Meanwhile Greaves two cars are soldiering on. There is less than a lap between Alex Brundle and the Morgan in front, while Elton Julian is
the same distance to Tor Graves, in the ADR car.

Just had Sam Hignett on the truck. Jota is his baby. He’s happy to see the car come home 10^th in class, recognising the huge
challenge that Le Mans presents. It’s all very well, but it’s easy to forget that 5 hours is still a lot of racing.

As far as improving positions, Simon Dolan can move up overall, but will struggle to improve his class position. The two Greaves cars
look set to finish in the positions below. However…………

A  bit late – got involved in a problem at Greaves. A throttle issue on the 42 car. Not a good garage to go in, with TV cameras
everywhere.

At last, it is warming up, and so too is Alex Brundle. He’s just posted the best lap for car 42. The Pecon car has just gone into the
gravel. It’s currently in 2^nd place.

Here’s where they’re at.