down those streets at 300 kilometers per hour, or more than that really. So it’s very special. And then the big part is obviously the night. The last two years I’ve ended up with the night shift and I think this year again I’ll end up with the night shift. And that’s really, really hard. Last year was particularly hard. I think I got in the car at two-fifteen in the morning and I got out at ten past six. It was nearly four hours. Four hours is the maximum you can do at any track and I did 3:55.
And I think last year you really had to push in that stint because you were recovering from a lot of issues with the electronics.
Yeah, exactly. The biggest challenge was it rained in the middle of the shift. And you know in the daytime, when it rains, you can see which part of the track is wet and which is dry because of the colour of the asphalt. But at night you can’t make out that difference. That makes it such a challenge. And more often than not one part of the track will be dry and one part will be wet because it’s a 14-kilometer lap. What tyres do you use and where do you have the grip and where you don’t and how do you not have an accident? It’s a huge challenge. Last year, we seemed to make the right call and I gained a lap back on the leaders. Sometimes we were ten seconds a lap faster than anybody else just by choosing the right tyres. As you say we were recovering so I had to take more risks than maybe other people. But that’s part of the challenge. Driving at night, driving in the rain is part of the big challenge of Le Mans.
Driving in those conditions, as you say, at night and in the rain, you’ve got cars all around you as well throwing up the spray, it must take a hell of a lot of courage to keep your foot flat and brake as late as possible when all you’ve got are your headlights?
Yeah, because it’s a high-speed circuit … the cars are set up, really, not for the corners and not for grip. They’re set up for straight-line speed. So when it rains, you’re really kind of hanging onto it. In our case you’re on public roads, you’re just out in the forest, in that area, and there’s nothing. It’s pitch dark and all you’ve got are your headlights and there’s five different parts of the track where you’re more or less doing 300 kilometers per hour. So it’s pretty insane.
But when it’s dry and in the night, I’ve heard drivers say that they actually end up going quicker because all you’ve got are your headlights and you go into a tunnel-vision scenario and it helps you concentrate better. Do you agree with that?
To be honest, that theory is pretty much nonsense. The reason you go quicker is because the track is cooler so it’s better for the tyres and the air is also cooler and denser so the engines work harder. That’s pretty much it. I quite like the romantic spin on that but it’s not true!
The first time you competed at Le Mans, in the build-up to the race what went through your mind? Because at that time it was the biggest event you’d ever competed in.
To be honest, that first year I was just really confused out of the car. In the car I knew what I was doing obviously. But out of the car I was really confused – when do you sleep, when do you eat, when do you go training? As I said, you’re there for eight days, what do you do with yourself. It’s quite a long drawn out affair. But I was very lucky. I had David Brabham as a team-mate. That year was his 19th Le Mans. He was obviously the winner in 2009. I had Peter Dumbreck as well. I think that was his sixth Le Mans. So between them they had done 25 Le Mans starts. So I had a couple of really good teachers who held my hand and helped me out. But once you get in the car then the job is the job you know. At the end of the day I know how to drive a race car fast. Then you just do what you have to do and get on with the job. You have to get your body used to it because in your head you’re thinking … okay let’s say seven-thirty is dinner time. But the way the race pans out, that might be in the middle of your quadruple stint. In which case, you need to do a carbo-load at five ‘o’ clock and get ready to get in the car at six. So there’s a lot of stuff that you need to be on top of all the time. You can’t really lose focus at all.