24 Hours of Le Mans

Oliver Gavin: Le Mans 2005, the best yet?

I suppose the real story behind the 2005 Le Mans 24 Hours starts at another event altogether, the 12 Hours of Sebring in March. Sebring saw the debuts of two new cars in the GT1 class, the Corvette C6-R and the Aston Martin DBR9s and it was obvious that the rivalry would be intense.

© Oliver Gavin

On that occasion it was Aston Martin that triumphed but only after the two Corvettes had suffered from on track incidents (number 64 was taken out by a back marker and number 63 had a brake disc explode) whilst some distance in the lead.

I suppose the real story behind the 2005 Le Mans 24 Hours starts at another event altogether, the 12 Hours of Sebring in March. Sebring saw the debuts of two new cars in the GT1 class, the Corvette C6-R and the Aston Martin DBR9s and it was obvious that the rivalry would be intense. On that occasion it was Aston Martin that triumphed but only after the two Corvettes had suffered from on track incidents (number 64 was taken out by a back marker and number 63 had a brake disc explode) whilst some distance in the lead.

After Sebring the next opportunity to renew the rivalry would be Le Mans and everyone was anticipating another fascinating battle - and so it proved to be. At the test day, this year a mere two weeks before the main event, Aston Martin showed that they had the pace to win the 24 Hour race. Corvette were disappointed with the times they achieved and went away to work on a number of improvements for the race. Again, this spurred the team to consider each and every detail that would perhaps swing the pendulum back to their side.

In qualifying, with a car that now felt more comfortable and without the benefit of qualifying tyres or a qualifying set up, Oliver showed that Corvette could get within striking distance of race times that Aston were likely to run at. His time of 1m 52.4s may have put him third on the grid but it showed that they could take the fight to Aston.

One of the key factors in the race itself was the blistering heat. 34ªC, 98ªF was the ambient temperature. Corvette Racing was used to running in hot temperatures in the United States, but not for 24 hours! Aston had less experience of high temperature runnning and perhaps this ultimately contributed to the final result. In car temperatures reached 150ªF and made it the toughest Le Mans Oliver has had to endure. he takes up the story:

“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 team mates 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 the 5th June and found ourselves some way from the Astons’ pace, the general assumption was that we were sandbagging, sticking strictly to the 3m55 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 tyres 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 pressurising 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 over 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 had also 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 which saw us go through to the chequered 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?!”

This result makes Oliver’s record at Le Mans an enviable one:
2001 - 3rd GTS
2002 - 1st GTS
2003 - 2nd GTS
2004 - 1st GTS
2005 - 1st GT1 (& 5th Overall)

As he said - 2006 is another year ……………

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