Jun.20.2002 　24 hours Equation of Fatigue and Emotion
Dawn broke after a long night and the sun is fairy high. The condition of machine becomes stable when the fatigue of staff seems to be at its peak.
Mechanics reserve their power for the last climax while a hint of languorous floats in the atmosphere though they are still under tremendous stress. There is always someone who talks wildly things we don't want hear every year -- "it is always the case something bad happens when we are almost there".
I don't believe in the power of words but this kind of joke is not wanted now.
As soon as the careless person said the cursed word we saw "DOME S101" running with smoke coming out of the body on the monitor. I flew off to the pit but it was nothing serious. The lid of gearbox oil was loose and oil leaked from there was on the exhaust pipes which made smoke. We tightened the lid and it was done.
Though I said I don't believe in the power of words, we have been saying we will get the pole position this year for so long and it has made us that the goal isn't pie in the sky and it seems to be achievable. That's why we let Jan have the extensively improved brand new works car.
In our original plan, Mugen engine was to be installed and Team Go was to be responsible for winning the race but the plan went on a rock due to various factors. Therefore, we had to rely on Jan's team again as we did last year.
Jan's team seemed to have grown up dramatically since last year but they were still little vulnerable to be called as Dome Works team. It was going to be interesting to see how much they could bring out the car's raw power.
Despite our hope, the result was a devastating defeat. We could not beat Audi or Dallara in all races on the test, qualify and final race day. The reason was simple: there was a limit a private team could have done. Lack of money, lack of tests, down sides of owner-driver, etc., and the level was far from winning Le Mans in any aspects. Although it is true that the machine still have more room to improve such as durability of the gearbox, I expected to see the car in the pole position at least in the qualify race knowing the test results we had. I have to say I was very disappointed as we only achieved the lower result than we had hoped though there might be more reasons the car didn't do well.

Having said that, we could not do anything about this at our own discretion and we have to hope top teams will accept the quality of the machine and use it one day or top teams will demonstrate the car's true abilities. It is like which came first, the chicken or the egg? Anyhow more time is definitely required and I have to give up as there is nothing we can do quickly.
As we just finished the race, I am still in mawkish sentiment and complain exasperatedly but our ambition is going forward step by step. Our evaluation in the European racing industry is coming up, although we are not well known yet. Our relationships with European companies based on the confidence in each other's engineering technology have been established thanks to the evaluation. For instance, F3, we are currently working with Lola as a joint venture, is such a promotable product to send to the oligopoly market by Dallara. We have been working on the project very carefully and this kind of joint venture is not something we could do without trusting the partner's capability (for details, please see Dome News).

We have just taken our first step in Europe. What made me moved most was the program on TV Asahi I saw after coming back from Le Mans. In the program, Dome was treated as one of foreign teams and I had a gut feeling that TV Asahi had full understanding of Dome's attitude towards the race. I had a problem when I came back. I had sent emails to all my friends to let them know TV on-air date and asked their support for the race, but I only received their complains later as they could not find out which car was ours, what position we got or we were racing at all? etc. If our car was leading in the pole position, it would have been on TV anyway -- I should take the consequences. Anyway the long 24 hours were over. Some were embracing each other, some were given a victorious toss, and some were in tears. Forces of impression seemed to come down from heavens and covered up Sarthe Sircuit. Not being able to abandon myself to the impression, I tried to pretend I was taking photos and observing the others going through the emotional experience calmly but I was actually very impressed by myself as I had fought for 24 hours, the result didn't matter much and feeling high -- fatigue and emotion were in proportion. Tough lot of people (Oku, Yamaguchi and Hayashi), who went back to the hotel, had a shower, slept well, had some really nice bacon then came to the circuit feeling refreshed, are not even allowed to be impressed as the others. Though I wasn't very happy about our car being in the 8th position, I was feeling fairly positive on the contrary and already thinking about the organization for the next year in the airplane back to Japan. It was the 10th Le Mans challenge for Dome and we only managed to complete the course once in the past. During the race we completed, the car had to be pitted right after the start as the gearbox was broken, and we could hardly say we finished the race we goaled in the last position after a 3-hour pit stop. I had another trouble before I went to the race; I found out I had left my passport at home at the airport and had to see off the race team while I was receiving boos from TOM's staff as they went up the escalator in Hakozaki. I looked back the past and realized I had never been in the circuit throughout the race before. We should not complain about being in the 8th position. As we only completed the course once and it was hardly a perfect run, it will be extremely blatant to complain. We could call our attitude as ambitious and we have never been more ambitious before to prepare for the next year's race. So let's see what happens. As we thought the team would be extremely busy this year, we booked a cheap flight and accommodation for Masami Yamaguchi to give him a line to help us to do the LIVE report. I was very happy about the first successful live report with photos. I really want to thank him for his help as I am given the chance here, on our homepage.

Minoru Hayashi