Gavin: Le Mans Class Win Best Yet?

[gaijin]

GAVIN: LE MANS CLASS WIN BEST YET?

Le Mans, France - Sunday's GT1 class win – my third and the Corvette Racing team's fourth in five years – was a fantastic result for the C6-R's first outing at Le Mans. I'm also very pleased for the American Le Mans Series. To have the three biggest classes (LM1, GT1 and GT2) all won by ALMS runners is a great compliment to them and says a lot about the high level of racing we now have in North America.

But back to Le Mans. In scorching heat and against some great competition, it was one of the toughest 24-hour races I've ever done, but the result just proves that the Corvette Racing team never gives up. I'm just delighted to be part of the team and to have brilliant teammates like Olivier Beretta and Jan Magnussen.

The success of the Aston Martins in their first races actually motivated us very much in our preparations. But, when we came to the official test here on June 5 and found ourselves some way from the Astons' pace, the general assumption was that we were sandbagging, sticking strictly to the 3:55 rule.

That wasn't actually the case so, the week in between the test day and the race, our engineers went back to Detroit and worked like madmen to try and find us a bit more speed here and there and get us more comfortable in the car. They worked wonders because when we came back for the race, the car was far more comfortable to drive, and we could do a lap time that was respectable and reasonable. We knew we had a very good race car.

It was a great race though, wasn't it? I really didn't think it would be that close for that long – after 22 hours there was a pair from each of our teams on the same lap. I followed both of the Aston Martin cars at various times during the race and, although we could close up under braking, and we were better in the Porsche Curves, we just couldn't touch them on the straights.

In my final stint, the team told me that we needed a certain lap time to make sure the Aston Martins would never catch us for the lead. That meant driving absolutely balls out, flat out, the whole time. In the configuration our car was in, that was as fast as it could go, but we achieved the lap time we needed, and they broke.

The only car problems we had were the two punctures. Le Mans uses the most amazingly sharp gravel in their gravel traps and that, combined with the number of rookies at the race who seemed to spend more time in them or spreading their contents over the track, definitely had an impact. A huge proportion of teams had punctures in the race. We were just lucky we had no damage as a result.

I've seen other people crawl back to the pits at 50 or 60 mph, but when you have to do it yourself, it's not funny with cars going by you at 200. Olivier also performed a miracle to save the car when his rear blew out - he went SO sideways in the Porsche Curves, but somehow he kept it off the wall.

Throughout the race none of the drivers or, in fact, anyone on the team, made any mistakes and we didn't damage the car in any way. Everybody knew exactly what they were going to do from the word go, and what the strategy was – even when we changed things on the hoof such as single stinting tires instead of double stinting them. Communication was key. Yes, we wanted to race the Astons desperately, but we didn't want to sacrifice our reliability by chasing, chasing, chasing. I think they were trying to lure us into that. We ended up pressuring them, much like last year, though this year was far, far hotter and far, far tougher.

With ambient temperatures of around 34oC (98oF), it meant that the mercury rose to more than 60oC (150oF) in the cockpit. We were fortunate to have an air conditioning unit in the car, which cooled air to be blown into our crash helmets so at least we could breathe. There's a pipe in the side of our helmets feeding it in, and the air cools your face and gives you reasonably clean and cool air to breathe. The system wasn't foolproof because of the extreme temperatures, and we had to limit the use of it, but it was definitely better than nothing. Corvette Racing also had worked hard on insulating the inside of car to make sure that not too much heat soak was coming through to the cockpit. I'm convinced that helped give us an edge over our rivals that saw us go through to the checkered flag when they did not.

I take my hat off to Aston Martin for pressuring us nearly all the way, but nobody beats Corvette Racing. As for the question mark at the beginning? It might be the best yet, but who knows what will happen next time?!