Alex Brundle, Alex Buncombe and Tom Kimber-Smith scored a third place at the 2012 Petit Le Mans driving the Greaves Motorsport Nissan powered Zytek LM P2 prototype. This result seemed most unlikely after the second hour following contact at Turn One with Neel Jani, the race leader. It looked as if Tom’s and the team’s luck had held and that they would escape with what at first appeared to be a damaged splitter and front bodywork, which was quickly replaced by the crew. However a few more laps after the repairs revealed that the impact had caused a major gearbox failure. The car had to go “behind the wall” for the transmission to be rebuilt, not a trivial issue. The team did an amazing job and the Zytek Nissan was back on track in just over an hour. At that point any form of success seemed a distant prospect, especially given the quality of the opposition. However the team has acquired a reputation for finishing races, no matter what problems are encountered, and this event held near Atlanta Georgia, was no exception. Gradually the team climbed back up the leader board and when the Chequered Flag was shown after 9 hours and 37 minutes of racing the team were overjoyed to finish on the podium. The result also meant that the team finished third overall in the LM P2 Class of the 2012 European Le Mans Series.

Jacob Greaves, Team Manager of Greaves Motorsport. “The team is really pleased with the result, though at one stage realistically a podium looked out of reach, it just shows that you should never give up till the race finishes. The team did a fantastic job to get the car back on track in such a short space of time and the drivers drove an almost faultless race.

It is pointless to speculate on what might have been if we had not been involved in the incident with the leader but we are confident that we would have been challenging at the sharp end. It is a pity that we were not able to realise the potential of the team and its partners, Nissan, Zytek and Dunlop, we had very strong race pace all day. Third place in the European Le Mans Series is great result for the team and we will be back next year to challenge once again for the top spot.”