5ZIGEN mechanic’s Le Man report

I like to share the brief report by a Team 5ZIGEN mechanic who participated in the Le Mans 24-hour race. Tatsuya Zushi, a chief mechanic of 5ZIGEN time attack cars, was hired by JLOC as a mechanic for the Le Man project. I tried my best to translate his report. Hope it has enough quality... Following is his brief report of Le Man.

It should've known that it'd much tougher than I was imagined... That's just what Le Man 24-hour has been counted as one of the three greatest races in the world.

The Murcielago had no problem until the race started except one tire was busted at a practice before the qualify session. During the qualify sessions, we could never go bed before 2am everyday. The reason was that the night sessions were conducted from 10pm - 12am every night because the sun doesn't set until then.... It was just a prelude of the fight against drowsiness.

At the day of race starts - Whole race track was in a festive mood. The pit was bustling with full of people from allover the world, from young to elder.

The biggest aim of the JLOC team was finishing the race.
Three hours after the race started, the right rear tire busted. It damaged cowl, the inner fenders and the radiator. The cost we had to pay fixing the damage was two hours. The water temp hit 130 degree (centigrade). But, the Lambo engine looked no problem.

JLOC Murcielago ran in silence to complete 24 hours after this problem. The gas mileage became getting better and could hold 3 stints after midnight that the temperature got cooler.

My main duties at the routine pit stops were air-jack and tire change. We've just been repeating filling up the gas and changing tires.

Sudden radio contact from a driver "5th gear was lost!"

The crew chief ordered the driver to bring the car back to the pit.
We've started to fix the gear as soon as the car came back.
However, it was not easy job, especially for the Murcielago...
We dropped off the gearbox and took apart of it. We cannot replace gearbox assembly by the regulation. The dog ring of the 5th gear was broken.

We spent three and half hours for this repair.
Another radio contact from the driver when all mechanics had taking break after we sent the car out, "Something wrong with 6th gear!"

It had been past 15 hours since the race started. 　Mechanics including me were not full of energy. But, anyways, every mechanic repeated same job just finished four hours ago again without uttering any complains... Yap, the 6th gear was broken.


An official noticed "the end" when we are about sending the car out after another 4 hours transmission job. It was said that the car is out of race automatically at the time the raps of the car became less than 50% off raps the class leader completed. We'd rather known this much earlier...

It was about evening time when we finish cleaning the pit and putting the race car to the trailer.... I noticed I've been awaking up more than 40 hours.

It was very tough but also good experience as a race mechanic.
I like to come back here if I get any chance.