Then there were the lights. Toyota had spent masses on developing their lights specifically for Le Mans.
The idea was that they would cover everything, whereas ours were like a couple of weak and flickering candles by comparison. If you were at a standstill you might be fooled into thinking they were decent, but not when you were doing the kind of speeds we were: 160mph through a section where reflective signs kept catching your eye and there wasn’t enough light on the road. You could be doing ‘only’ 160mph, but it would feel like 300mph, simply because you couldn’t see where you’re going.
So why did I want to go if there was no chance of beating the Toyotas, what with me having such a highly developed competitive streak and everything?
Firstly, because there was always the possibility that although we wouldn’t beat the Toyotas we might still get a podium. Also, who knows? The Toyotas might have an issue. Two years previously, a Toyota had been leading the race and with one lap to go had a problem and didn’t win.
I also knew that Le Mans was about more than just winning. I knew from watching and from hearing from those who had experienced it first-hand – my mate Chrissy won it in 2007 – that there really is nothing like it in racing. I’d heard that the night-time racing adds a new dimension; that the fans are rabidly enthusiastic and stay up all night, their support never flagging; how the team is exhausted but it’s a real group effort; you’re all in it together and working as a team.
That last point is important. We drivers get a bit of kip, but the mechanics don’t. They work straight through – and not just 24 hours, but 48, because they’re building the car the day before, making sure everything’s ready for the race – so that by the time the chequered flag is waved they’re beside themselves with fatigue. To them it doesn’t really matter where you’ve finished, the fact is that you’ve finished.
So I wanted to go there and get a feel for it. Yes, my ultimate aim was always to go to Le Mans and win (spoiler alert: it still is) so this was more of a practice to get the experience, thinking that in the future I could take advantage of a rule change and go back with a manufacturer, a lot of whom are likely to be interested in doing Le Mans in 2021 (watch this space).
So to the race itself. The build-up to it you already know. That was me using my mate’s simulator, meaning that I was familiar with the circuit – well, a digital version of it at least.
Arriving at the ‘Circuit de la Sarthe’, aka Le Mans, in the Grand Ouest area of France, we were told the weather for the race was likely to be dry and sunny, and so it proved. Qualifying went well. Our Number 11 SMP Racing car was seventh on the grid behind the two Toyota teams (It Has Started), Rebellion Racing and our sister car, number 17.
We started the race with one of my co-drivers, Vitaly Petrov, at the wheel and had a sensor problem after ten laps, so we had to pit and were in the pits for two hours.
Now, even in a 24-hour race you don’t want to be in the pits for two hours. We lost something like 45 laps as a result of being in the pits for that long. It was a race-wrecking, hope-destroying amount of time to be in the pits, and by the time we eventually trundled out again we were last by a long way, knowing that we had another 21 hours of pushing forward in the sure knowledge that our only reward would be to finish.
But…
This was Le Mans. A lot of entrants don’t finish. Finishing is good in the context of Le Mans. Finishing well is a bonus. Podium or even – gasp – first, and that’s your boyhood racing dream right there. So although you might have been seeing a few heads go down, we battled on.
Mentally, though, it’s really tough for a driver. My co-drivers for the race, Vitaly and Mikhail Aleshin, went out and did sterling work, and then it was my turn, and I strapped in and decided to just have fun.
You have cars from several different categories racing at Le Mans, so I was still passing a lot of traffic, which is always good for a boost, plus I was having a great time racing cars from our category. Also, my first drive was from about 6pm when it was still light, so I was driving through sunset and into the night. On the one hand it’s a beautiful time of day, but on the other it’s a tough bit of the drive to do because the sun’s so low in the sky. There’s one corner where you’re doing 220mph. It’s at the end of a straight and there’s a little kink, which was easy flat, but with the sun at that height you were blind so you were basically driving by memory of where this kink appeared in the straight.
Now, that’s not such a problem if you’re on your own, but if there’s traffic in front, which there always will be at Le Mans, and it’s doing 30mph slower than you, which it often is, then you have a problem, because at a time like that, with a car in front, going by memory isn’t really an option.
So that was hard, to say the least. Still, the rest of the circuit was fine. It’s a great feeling when the sun goes down and it’s pitch black and all the cockpit lights suddenly become really bright and you feel like you’re alone. You’re looking around and it’s so surreal because you’re passing a Ferrari, you’re 30–40mph quicker and you’re towing up behind it, overtaking it, pulling back in. The Le Mans track is just under eight-and-a-half miles long, and it’s a mix of dedicated race circuit and normal roads that are open to the public the rest of the year. These sections have a dotted line down the middle and, you know how roads are, they have a camber so the rain runs off. When you pull out to overtake at that speed the car jumps a little to the side, and then when you pull back in, it jumps to the other side again. Even after having driven for so many years, I’ve never felt that.
It’s emotional, too, because it’s just you and the car for so long. Together you’re dealing with so many different situations. Overtaking traffic, fighting with other cars, feeling your way around a circuit you don’t really know that well.
Oh yeah, because it turns out that my mate’s simulator hadn’t actually prepared me as well as I’d hoped. What’s more, I’d only done 12 laps in practice. But in many ways that added to the magic of the occasion. All that crash-course learning was great fun.
My stint was three and-a-quarter hours long, and I was wired when I came into the pits for the changeover.
The first time I did a driver change – in practice, this was – I was like, ‘We can’t do this – it’s too difficult.’
It took us over 45 seconds. You’re getting out of the straps. You’re trying to clamber out of this tiny space with lots of sharp edges – built for endurance rather than swift driver changes. It’s a sort of push–pull movement that you do, and you better be skinny as well, or you’re not coming out of that car. Once you’re out you literally fall in a heap to the ground.
Oh, and while all this is happening don’t forget about your seat spacer, because there’s no adjusting the seat in a Le Mans car, it’s all done with seat spacers. At the same time the new driver has to put his seat spacer in – all affixed with Velcro, the racer’s friend – and then he jumps in.
It’s very difficult to get out. You always hit your knees and your shinbones and you basically fall to the floor, so the other driver can jump over you and into the car, because you have 30 seconds to do a full driver change. Not that it really mattered, because we were so far back, but we did it anyway, and we did it in 30 seconds, just.
With that done, I dragged myself to my feet, watched the car go out and then trudged back to the garage surfing a weird mix of emotions. The drive itself had been intoxicating but I was dog-tired. The experience had been incredible, and yet of the cars that had not yet retired, we were last.
At some point, I discovered that our sister car, number 17 – or the number 17 SMP Racing BR Engineering BR1-AER, to give it its full title – had suffered a rear suspension failure and had to leave the race. I think he’d been running in third at the time, so that was a bit gutting. It showed that we had the muscle.
Back in the garage, I ran into Chrissy just as I was taking off my helmet. Bear in mind that Chrissy’s known me since the year dot. He looked at m
e, and the expression he wore was one of complete shock. He was, like, ‘Are you okay?’
I went, ‘I think so,’ and stared at him with wired eyes that were as big as saucers.
‘Well, it’s just you’re white.’
‘Okay…’
‘Like absolute Persil white.’
I think it was because of the sheer effort of concentrating in the dark
He said, ‘I’ve never seen you look like that. You look like shit.’
Such a charmer. Still, more than anyone, Chrissy knew what racing at Le Mans takes out of you. They don’t tell you that. But it does. I was all over the shop. I felt like I’d had five shots of tequila for lunch: tired, disorientated, lurching drunkenly one way and then the other.
The team and Chrissy helped me back to the hospitality area where the first thing I did was start rehydrating, then I took a shower and had a rub down, at which point they began to stretch me out a bit. I could literally feel my muscles uncoil. You’re in the same position for three and a half hours in the car, so they need to work on your muscles. It’s not like a road car, which is built for comfort, where you have relative freedom of movement. The space is confined. You’re frozen pretty much into the same position.
And then you’ve got to get some food in you, which is the main thing. You’d think that the driver would be ravenous getting out of the car but it’s not the case, even though all you’ve had during the drive is a drink. Just as it is in an F1 car, the drink is dispensed via a button, except – in our car, at least – the drink has a picture of a cocktail glass on it, which is a neat touch. It’s a special drink packed with minerals and what have you, and it certainly keeps you going, but it’s no substitute for proper food.
Only trouble is, you really have to force that food down. And then you probably have four hours before you’re back in the car, maybe a little bit less, and you go off to your little Portakabin where you try and sleep – ‘try’ being the operative word. The first half an hour, you can’t sleep. Your head’s spinning. You’re still on the circuit.
I remember lying there on a camp bed in a titchy Portakabin unable to believe that I could be so tired – bone tired – and yet not fall instantly to sleep. I didn’t expect that at all. Finally, I took some melatonin, got to sleep for an hour, woke up to the alarm, thinking, What the… and feeling awfully disorientated until the noise of the cars around the track reminded me that I was at Le Mans, and I bounded out of bed.
I took a hot shower, and then I went into the sports area for a massage and some reaction work, firstly on the BATAK wall, and secondly doing an exercise where I’m sitting on a ball having tennis balls thrown at me, catching them while remaining perfectly poised (well, almost) on the ball, the idea being to get back in the game, trying to wake up your unwilling body.
Another snack. By now it was one in the morning and unlike before, the food – fruit and an energy bar – was going down well. Ditto my espresso.
After that I spent about 20 minutes in the garage to get up to speed on current events, watching the car, listening to the driver’s comments, chatting to the engineer. At no point did I pay too much attention to the race itself, other than to ascertain that we were still in last. Hey, at least we were still on the track. That, after all, was the important thing. At this rate, we would finish. That, remember, was our aim.
‘Put your helmet on, then,’ I was told.
And it seemed like only five minutes after I’d got out of the car that I was running out with my helmet on and my seat spacer gripped in one hand, seeing the car coming into the pits and trying to shake off the still spaced-out feeling that was all over me like a winter duvet.
The other driver, Vitaly, jumped out, I hurled my spacer in and climbed in over him, wriggling into position as the straps were fastened over me. They dropped the car, which started up automatically as soon as all four wheels touched the tarmac – pretty cool feature, that – out of the pit lane, and then it was all go again for the next 3 hours, 46 minutes.
This time I felt so much more at home. It was like I’d got the hang of the whole experience. Before I’d had a good time but I still felt I was racing by the seat of my pants; I’m not sure I’d ever felt in control of the whole experience. Now, I was.
Sunrise came, and it was beautiful. Not just the warm glow it cast over the circuit, but the fact that all of a sudden I could see again. For the first time since the previous day, I was able to fully make out the cars I was overtaking, and what a difference it made. I could see that they bore battle scars: ripped-off wheel arches and rubber marks down the side. On some the lights weren’t working or hung off at odd angles, having been hit overnight. And every single one was filthy.
What’s more, of course, my vision was better and the circuit was still cold. Everything works at that time of day, so the lap times are really fast. I finished my stint, went back, ate, tried to sleep (no joy this time), massage, reaction work, and I was told that my final stint would be the last of the race. ‘So you’re going to bring the car home.’
‘Cool.’
And so now, of course, it was about us finishing. Which is not to say we were taking it easy, because at the end of the day we’re racing drivers and there’s no point in being out there unless you’re pushing it to the max, and so we were.
‘Wait, though,’ they said.
‘What?’
‘Well, there’s a slight problem with the engine.’
It turned out that they didn’t want me to over-rev the engine, so I had to short shift, not using the dull rpm. It was a temperature thing. So they wanted me to shift exactly on the indication lights. Don’t delay. Be precise. At the same time there was a guy by the car with a computer plugged in, which is never a good sign. Like Han Solo in Star Wars I was getting a bad feeling about this.
For about 30 minutes, all was good. Over the talkback they said, ‘Ah you’ve got to shift early at this point, you can’t rev too high there.’
They could tell that the temperatures were rising.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’m taking it as easy as I can,’ and I went down the back straight, through the kink that had been almost impossible in the dark, went through there at 220mph, when suddenly there came an unpleasant sound from the engine. The kind of sound you really don’t want to hear from an engine. A shrieking sound of a machine in so much agony that you almost feel sorry for it.
At the same time the rear was moving in an unexpected way, and the sound from the engine began to rise. It was the sound of the engine eating itself, and at almost exactly the same time as I resigned myself to thinking, Game over, it blew up and I pulled off to the inside of the track, the car a non-runner.
And that was it. We had half an hour to go. Just 30 minutes and we would have completed Le Mans, and although we would have been in last place that was infinitely preferable to being a DNF.
It was painful. I’ve got to admit that I got pretty emotional about it all. I clambered out of the car feeling absolutely despondent, dragging my helmet off my head and plonking myself against a barrier. Not far away a huddle of fans were being really supportive, ‘Oh, so sorry, JB,’ and stuff that I was really grateful to hear (I hope that I showed it, but apologies if I didn’t).
As ever in a situation like that it was the team I felt most sorry for. The mechanics had been up for 48 hours. Me, I’d been sleeping and resting and messing about catching balls while they’ve been flat out working, so I really felt for them. This was their first year in Le Mans as a team and the aim was just to get to the end and neither us nor our sister car was able to achieve that.
For me, I just wanted to see that chequered flag. I wanted to see that look on the faces of the team when we came in having completed this marathon race. I was sad for the other drivers but I was more sad for everyone else. That feeling of deflation was a communal thing.
I stood out there a while, watching all the cars coming past, which was quite weird. The Toyotas were cruising past, nose to tail, whi
ch was a bit sad to see. As for the rest of the field, you could tell that fatigue had set in. Drivers were taking it easy, lifting off early, saving the brakes, a very different proposition to the beginning of the race when it was all guns blazing and loads of overtaking action.
Next I clambered on the back of a steward’s motorbike for the trip back to the paddock and a round of commiserations with the team.
What struck me on arrival was that most of our team were French, and so to get a win on French soil would have meant a great deal to them. What I’d loved about them during our short time together was their sheer passion for the racing. A total breed unto themselves, they loved a smoke. Bear in mind this was in 2018, not 1978. I’d never seen so much smoking. Same with the coffee. There was always a queue for the espresso machine a mile long. I mean, I like a coffee, but these guys…
However, there is a happy ending to all of this, because the World Endurance Championships, which is the Championship you need to enter in order to compete at Le Mans, took us next to Silverstone where we were running in third when we had an engine failure. Then Fugi, where we had a starter motor issue, which was a shame because our pace was good and we actually led about ten laps in a wet-dry race. And then on to Shanghai – the six hours of Shanghai race.
In practice, we were quite competitive. In fact, in wet practice, I was quickest in one of the sessions – quicker than the Toyotas after which I could have left happy, right there and then.
How to Be an F1 Driver Page 19
