“One of the big parts of the car that gives us cause for excitement and anxiety is the ‘Energy Recovery System,” says Ben, referring of course to the ‘hybrid’ aspect of the LMP1 powertrain. It’s a mechanical flywheel system that spins at over 52,000rpm.



“We specced out an extraordinarily powerful ERS, but it’s given us plenty of trouble just because it’s a hard thing to do. It’s more expensive than an engine - it’s basically a special engine done from scratch.



“On the dyno and on track, we have pushed out over 1000bhp on our ERS alone. Obviously we’ve got the big kick that ‘woah this is amazing’, however, there are a lot of factors, and being reliable is very important. So we’re probably going to have to be a little bit more… conservative. 24hrs is not a burn up the straight, it’s a long job. We’ll have to be very careful with our ERS.



“But by not going up to the full potential of our ERS… the brakes for example, we were going to be absorbing something like 80 per cent of our energy into the system from the front brakes, which meant our front brakes were hardly going to need any cooling. We save drag like crazy, we save weight, but then we have the situation where we had the ERS trip out because it’s finding an error due to temperature or something, and suddenly the brakes are smoking hot and we have to stop. So we have to plan on being able to run at full speed with the brakes being able to take care of themselves. We’ve had to uprate the brakes, increase the cooling dramatically, it’s caused us to spend a lot of time, so we can run at Le Mans come hell or high water.



“At one level it’s a bad thing, because it’s difficult for spectators and fans to get an understanding of what’s been done to maximise the speed of the car, by looking at management of energy for the lap. We simulate so many different characteristics… do we lift and coast, do we power down by absorbing energy into the ERS when we’ve got too much power from the engine but we want to operating at maximum volumetric efficiency…?”



Ben’s brain, if you haven’t figured it out yet, is HUGE.