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10.05.2019
Gibson is the contract engine supplier of the P2 prototype machines in the FIA World endurance as well as many other championships. Besides the FIA, they are also providing LMP1-teams with an all new performance engine wit. With the help of Motul’s finest lubrication their engines are pushed to its absolute limit, race after race. We talked to technical director Ian Lovett and discovered the required ingredients needed to build a reliable endurance engine.
Correct! Founder Bill Gibson started building engine management systems somewhere in the eighties. Later on, he bought a company building Cosworth engines and started building his own Gibson “Zytek” F3000 engines. In a second phase the company moved into sportswear racing which is when this story all began.
It’s mainly a cost related reason. In the past we’ve been toying around with a lot of ideas and concepts. In order to justify the cost of developing a whole new type of engine, we would have to increase the price for our customer teams significantly. When the agreement with the FIA regarding the LMP2 deal was signed, we realised we already had a good package with our V8 engine that would meet the FIA’s cost constraints.
Oh yes, we definitely are. We’re waiting for the new round of regulations to be released for the 2020/2021 season. Afterwards, we can decide what direction we need to go. We’ve actually been building hybrid engines since the late nineties; in that period we’ve built one in collaboration with Panoz.
The LMP1 engine is an evolution of the LMP2 unit and has become vastly different. All the internals are different, the displacement is different as well as the crank shaft, the con rods, even the cylinder heads and the engine management unit. In essence, the LMP1 engine is making more power while consuming less fuel.
Well we don’t really get any engine failures. The biggest advantage of working with this engine is that it’s a product that has started its development back in the early 2000’s, over the years we gathered an enormous amount of data. Meaning: we have a very accurate idea about the lifecycle of each part in each engine and when it’s time to replace it.
Oh no! Definitely not. That’s why we have a truck full of engineers present at every race. They make sure the team’s engines are looked after and manage the pool of engines. We gather data from all the engines before and after the race and bring them back to the workshop and replace and rebuild the engines. Each LMP1 team, Rebellion, Dragonspeed, SMP and Bykolles have one engineer per car. These engines run our own fueling system and we keep a very close eye on them. In P2 the FIA requires us to have a minimum of 2 engineers per six cars but to be honest we often involve a lot more people.
We don’t just use Motul products in the cars actually. Our machines in our factory have Motul coolant so Motul literally runs through the entire company. The engines themselves use Motul 300V and have Mo Cool coolant. In the factory we also use various other Motul products for cleaning and maintenance as well. The biggest advantage about working with Motul is that instead of buying of the shelf engine oils, we now have access to a laboratory and engineers who can help us developing and making bespoke products for our needs. That is the biggest plus for our company.
