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Le Mans / ALMS
IN THE COCKPIT: Oliver Gavin, Le Mans
It’s taken a couple of days to be able to reflect on what happened to us in this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans and, to be honest, to be able to talk about it...
Oliver Gavin and co. in the No. 74 Corvette C6.R had the speed but just not the luck to win this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans. (Photo: John Dagys)
It’s taken a couple of days to be able to reflect on what happened to us in this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans and, to be honest, to be able to talk about it. Unless you’ve been to this race before, you’ve maybe got no idea about the size of it – it’s an 8.5 mile track so there’s a lot of stuff going on, in and around that.
Add to that the history, the passion of the 240,000 fans from all over the world, how long and tiring the whole week is (practice doesn’t start until 7:00pm on Thursday and finishes at Midnight both Wednesday and Thursday), how emotionally draining it is…and that’s just if you win. When you have as hard a time as we did this past weekend, everything seems magnified ten times over.
Tommy Milner and I came into this year’s race on the back of two consecutive ALMS wins and we’d had a good test day in France ten days before the race so we were pretty pumped up. Le Mans continues to be a really big deal for GM and Corvette Racing, and Tommy, Richard Westbrook and I wanted to make up for last year’s non finish for the No. 74 car.
Before the race, I talked about what might have been my ‘ideal’ Le Mans week and that included no rain at all and no problems with the car. Well, that didn’t work out! It was raining when we arrived and it hardly stopped until the race. I say when ‘we’ arrived, but Richard and Jordan [Taylor], who were coming straight to France from the Grand-Am race at Mid-Ohio, made an entrance all of their own after being delayed by about 12 hours and missing tech.
To say they got a bit of stick from everyone is an understatement, even though it wasn’t their fault flights were cancelled!
Thursday’s practice/qualifying was dry but it was overcast and cold – it looked like it could pour at any minute. After being quickest of the GTE cars on Wednesday, we got bumped down to third on Thursday but that’s not bad at all for a 24-hour race. Things were kind of going to plan.
Race morning was wet but it started to dry up well before the race and we had a brilliant first ten hours. The GTE Pro class wasn’t the biggest in terms of numbers, but it was massively tight with us against Aston Martin, a couple of very quick Ferraris and Porsche which is always likely to spring a surprise when you least expect it.
I managed to take the lead shortly after the first hour and we traded it with the Aston and the No.51 AF Corse Ferrari (which went on to win) as pit stops came and went, and it included some brilliant, entertaining and hard-but-fair racing with the Prodrive-run Aston Martin car which reminded us all of the GT1 glory days.
Unfortunately the race began to unravel badly in the 11th hour. Richard took over from Tommy and had just left the pits when he lost the left rear wheel at the Dunlop Esses. He then had to travel an entire lap of the circuit on three wheels to return to the pits.
The guys did a fantastic job repairing it quickly but both he and I later returned to the pits several times with a gearbox problem and, then, a bad vibration which took ages to get to the bottom of. By that time we were already about 20 laps behind.
Like many other drivers up and down the field, Le Mans bites when you least expect it and Tommy was really unlucky in the Porsche Curves in the 18th hour and hit the barriers pretty hard. Although he nursed the car back to the garage, it was pretty battered.
Our crew virtually rebuilt the back half of the chassis but we lost hours in the pits and it was game over. The guys replaced gearbox internals, half-shafts, endless bodywork, hubs, pretty much everything that could be replaced.
With no possibility of a decent result, the car was held in the garage until the final 40 minutes of the race when I drove it to the finish as it was important for Corvette Racing to have both cars finish the race. We weren’t classified as we didn’t complete enough laps but we took the checker.
I still can’t really find the words to describe how I feel about the outcome. The real shame is that we were all driving really well, all quick and the car was perfect, so the result isn’t at all a reflection on where we think we should have finished. After the wheel came off it was like someone has pushed a button for everything to go wrong but, having said that, we’re all thinking about Toyota’s Anthony Davidson who’s lying in a French hospital with a broken back. You have to put a sense of perspective into it.
In 11 years of coming here with Corvette I’ve never seen both our cars in the pits at the same time during the night. Luckily the No. 73 car had a few less problems than we did and came through to take fifth in class. It wasn’t a great weekend for sure, but we’ll come back stronger, more organized and even more determined to get another win. The analysis and planning starts now.
~Olly
A former British F3 Champion and Formula One test driver, Oliver Gavin has raced in North America for the last decade for Corvette Racing, representing General Motors. He has achieved three American Le Mans Series GT1 Championship titles and four GT1 class wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and in 2012 will also be racing in select races with Spirit of Daytona in the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series.
For more information, visit: www.olivergavin.com, Facebook Oliver Gavin, or Twitter @OliverGavin
Add to that the history, the passion of the 240,000 fans from all over the world, how long and tiring the whole week is (practice doesn’t start until 7:00pm on Thursday and finishes at Midnight both Wednesday and Thursday), how emotionally draining it is…and that’s just if you win. When you have as hard a time as we did this past weekend, everything seems magnified ten times over.
Tommy Milner and I came into this year’s race on the back of two consecutive ALMS wins and we’d had a good test day in France ten days before the race so we were pretty pumped up. Le Mans continues to be a really big deal for GM and Corvette Racing, and Tommy, Richard Westbrook and I wanted to make up for last year’s non finish for the No. 74 car.
Before the race, I talked about what might have been my ‘ideal’ Le Mans week and that included no rain at all and no problems with the car. Well, that didn’t work out! It was raining when we arrived and it hardly stopped until the race. I say when ‘we’ arrived, but Richard and Jordan [Taylor], who were coming straight to France from the Grand-Am race at Mid-Ohio, made an entrance all of their own after being delayed by about 12 hours and missing tech.
To say they got a bit of stick from everyone is an understatement, even though it wasn’t their fault flights were cancelled!
Thursday’s practice/qualifying was dry but it was overcast and cold – it looked like it could pour at any minute. After being quickest of the GTE cars on Wednesday, we got bumped down to third on Thursday but that’s not bad at all for a 24-hour race. Things were kind of going to plan.
Race morning was wet but it started to dry up well before the race and we had a brilliant first ten hours. The GTE Pro class wasn’t the biggest in terms of numbers, but it was massively tight with us against Aston Martin, a couple of very quick Ferraris and Porsche which is always likely to spring a surprise when you least expect it.
I managed to take the lead shortly after the first hour and we traded it with the Aston and the No.51 AF Corse Ferrari (which went on to win) as pit stops came and went, and it included some brilliant, entertaining and hard-but-fair racing with the Prodrive-run Aston Martin car which reminded us all of the GT1 glory days.
Unfortunately the race began to unravel badly in the 11th hour. Richard took over from Tommy and had just left the pits when he lost the left rear wheel at the Dunlop Esses. He then had to travel an entire lap of the circuit on three wheels to return to the pits.
The guys did a fantastic job repairing it quickly but both he and I later returned to the pits several times with a gearbox problem and, then, a bad vibration which took ages to get to the bottom of. By that time we were already about 20 laps behind.
Like many other drivers up and down the field, Le Mans bites when you least expect it and Tommy was really unlucky in the Porsche Curves in the 18th hour and hit the barriers pretty hard. Although he nursed the car back to the garage, it was pretty battered.
Our crew virtually rebuilt the back half of the chassis but we lost hours in the pits and it was game over. The guys replaced gearbox internals, half-shafts, endless bodywork, hubs, pretty much everything that could be replaced.
With no possibility of a decent result, the car was held in the garage until the final 40 minutes of the race when I drove it to the finish as it was important for Corvette Racing to have both cars finish the race. We weren’t classified as we didn’t complete enough laps but we took the checker.
I still can’t really find the words to describe how I feel about the outcome. The real shame is that we were all driving really well, all quick and the car was perfect, so the result isn’t at all a reflection on where we think we should have finished. After the wheel came off it was like someone has pushed a button for everything to go wrong but, having said that, we’re all thinking about Toyota’s Anthony Davidson who’s lying in a French hospital with a broken back. You have to put a sense of perspective into it.
In 11 years of coming here with Corvette I’ve never seen both our cars in the pits at the same time during the night. Luckily the No. 73 car had a few less problems than we did and came through to take fifth in class. It wasn’t a great weekend for sure, but we’ll come back stronger, more organized and even more determined to get another win. The analysis and planning starts now.
~Olly
A former British F3 Champion and Formula One test driver, Oliver Gavin has raced in North America for the last decade for Corvette Racing, representing General Motors. He has achieved three American Le Mans Series GT1 Championship titles and four GT1 class wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and in 2012 will also be racing in select races with Spirit of Daytona in the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series.
For more information, visit: www.olivergavin.com, Facebook Oliver Gavin, or Twitter @OliverGavin
Monterey
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