The hybrid racer campaigned by Corsa Motorsports in the American Le Mans Series had its coming out party at Lime Rock last weekend. How did the brand-new, high-tech and largely untested car do in the heat of competition?
Quite well, thank you very much.
In racing, it's all about winning. Teams try long and hard to reach the podium where the top three finishers stand, but Corsa Motorsports accomplished that impressive feat in its first outing with the Ginetta-Zytek racer we told you about last week. Sure, winning would have been better, but for a first time effort, coming in third behind Simon Pagenaud and Gil de Ferran in the factory-backed Acura and this year's Le Mans winner David Brabham in another Acura is a solid achievement.
The boys from Corsa put up a fight to get there. They had what was described as "a spirited battle" against Jon Field in his Intersport Lola in the early stages of the race until the Intersport car conked out. Picture that: A new hybrid more reliable than a tried and true internal combustion-powered ride.
The Corsa GZ-09-SH Hybrid competes in the top tier LMP1 category of ALMS competition and features a kinetic-energy-recovery system similar to what Formula 1 is wrestling with this year. It uses the kinetic energy otherwise dispelled as thermal energy through the brakes and converts it to DC voltage stored in a lithium-ion battery, then uses it as an added boost for the internal combustion engine.
Drivers Johnny Mowlem and Stefan Johansson had a trouble-free run to finish third overall and also in their P1 class. And yes, for those of you racing trivia people out there, that's the same Stefan Johansson who used to race for Ferrari and McLaren in Formula 1. Curiously, Ginetta-Zytek didn’t place in the top-3 in the Michelin Green X Challenge, since most people expected the electric power from the KERS system to help offset the internal combustion engine’s energy consumption.
Photo: Corsa Motorsports
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