Zoom Better luck next year

For Jan Lammers the 2008 Le Mans 24 Hours finished prematurely after almost 11 hours of racing. Lammers, who drove the Charouz Racing/Muscle Milk Lola Judd together with Gregg Pickett and Klaus Graf, encountered technical setbacks during his stint, just before 1 o'clock in the morning.

"It was a broken engine valve spring that forced us to retire," said Lammers. "When I was behind the safety car (after a crash by Marcel Fassler in the Courage) the throttle got stuck. By switching the ignition off and on I was able to drive back to the pits, but I had the feeling that the engine was not running on all 10 cylinders, it did not sound OK to me."

"The team checked, but at first did not see anything wrong and I went back out again after the green flag, but then it really was over. I did manage to reach the back straight but that was it," explained Lammers, who did not have any other major problems during his stints. However, his teammates did.

First it was Gregg Pickett who collided with Tommy Erdos, but the incident was not Pickett's fault: Erdos outbraked him but went back on his line immediately, which was too quick to react in time.

After that, Klaus Graf and Karem Ojeh encountered each other in the Ford chicane. Graf went alongside Ojeh's car, who suddenly moved to the inside. five or six laps were lost repairing the damage.

"As far as the race is concerned we could not have done much better than where we were running when we retired I think," Jan Lammers considered. "But that's the way it is this time."

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