Taurus Sports Racing

Taurus Sports Racing came with two old Lola B2K/10s with two different engines whose
origins go back to the end of the 90s. The most important innovation of this year's Le
Mans race, a diesel engine, was in the back of the Lola no. 10. The project was led by Ian
Dawson's Taurus Team and Caterpillar with the help of Mountain, a British engineering
firm.
Power came from a 5-litre Volkswagen Toureg engine whose installation required a reinforeced
chassis. Obviously it lacked testing and only did a few laps during preliminary practice and then
withdrew from Monza after a few slow laps. This car would be driven by Calum Lockie, Anthony
Klumpen and Phil Andrews. The other car in this team had a 4-litre Judd: it would be entrusted
to Christian Vann, Brian Luenberger and Didier Andre.

At practice in April the Lola-Caterpillar's Le
mans debut got ff to a smoky start. The car
covered just 3 laps in the morning the quickest
of which was in 4m 25,989s (50th overall), as
it was leaking diesel. Behind the Lola came the
reserve WR and the Morgan. It had been
rumoured that Audi was thinking of following
the diesel path (this just proves that Audi was
not the first team to drive a diesel race car),
but the Lola's problems confirmed why Dr.
Ulrich had gone off the idea when he discove-
red just how difficult it was to build a competi-
tive car.

In April the Lola had run in to problems and it
looked like they had not been solved as the
car stopped on the entry to the Dunlop curve
around 23h00 in the June practice. Before this
Phil Andrews and Calum Lockie had improved
its preliminary practice time by over ten
seconds. On June 10th the car managed only 2
laps due to an oil leak, which was a big blow to
Anthony Klumpen's hopes as he had been very
slow on wednesday. It was now up to the
stewards to decide his fate.

The Lola no. 4 qualified in 3m 50,703s by Didier Andre on 19th place and the Lola no. 10 had
qualified in 4m 14,380 by Phil andrews on 41st place.
The Lola-Caterpillar started from the pits ands uddenly everything fell into place as it covered
13 laps in an hour at an average speed of 184,800 silencing its critics. At this rate its perfor-
mance was on a pair with that of the reynard victorious in LM P675 in 2003. But the diesel-
engined Lola did not break the 3-hour barrier. It stopped at Arnage but managed to rejoin its pit
where its race ended with a broken transmission. The diesel will only come into its own when a
gearbox has been found capable of coping with the enormous low-down power of this type of
engine. It was the first official retirement announced in the 5th hour.
While the Lola-Caterpillar had kept the mechanics busy the Lola Judd was running like a train
apart from refuelling stops. The taurus Team no. 4 now had its eye on 10th place. By 22h00 the
car was in 8th place overall behind the two audis, the twoPescarolos, the Dallara and the
quickest LM GTSs.
But in the morning they had to change rear brakes, the gearbox and enginge oil and lost nearl
one hour. And around noon Leuenberger had troubles with the starter and the clutch losing
more than two hours in the pit. The Lola-Judd fell back and ended up in 20th place overall or
8th place in LM P1 doing 300 laps in 24 hours.