Daytona, Indianapolis, Monaco, Le Mans. Names of places, names of races. And much more. For enthusiasts, attending the Daytona 500, Indy 500, Monaco Grand Prix, or 24 Heures du Mans is the ultimate spectating experience, and a win at one of these races is the Holy Grail of auto racing. These are not just races, they're pilgrimages for the faithful. For true believers, going to Indy or Le Mans is more than going to a race, it's coming into contact with and being at the site of greatness. Going to Daytona, Indy, Monaco, or Le Mans is also being in the midst of a hellacious celebration, a race car carnival, a bash that is, in its own way, every bit as raucous and riotous as a Super Bowl game. In other words, an adrenaline rush, a chance to party, to yell and scream for your favorite driver or team, maybe get a little stupid in the company of like-minded friends, and see, feel, hear, savor, some damned fine auto racing.
For racing zealots whose preference runs to full-bodied prototypes or production (or, at least, production-based) sports cars on road courses, the annual 24 Hours of Le Mans is the race. The race has been run annually (except for 1936, when the race was cancelled, and again from 1940 through 1948 thanks to WWII) since 1923 on an immense circuit just to the south of the Loire Valley industrial city of Le Mans. It's grueling in every respect. Racing for a full 24 hours puts a terrible toll on the machines. The crews have to be on alert for the duration, grabbing naps when and where they can. And the drivers put in several multi-hour shifts behind the wheel, spread through an entire day-to-night-to-day cycle--on an 8.45-mile long racing circuit, which is about three times the length of the average course, and one that is still made up in part by two-lane country roads. There's nothing else quite like Le Mans for pushing the endurance of man and machine to their limits--and beyond. Just finishing is an accomplishment to be proud of, and a win--in class or, of course, overall--is prestigious to the extreme.
Corvettes are certainly not strangers at the Circuit de l'Sarthe, starting with Briggs Cunningham's three car effort in 1960, but last year's C5-R invasion marked the first time there was open and direct factory participation in this classic enduro. The C5-R's Le Mans debut was encouraging and quite respectable, with one placing third in the GTS class behind two of the Chrysler-backed ORECA Viper GTS-Rs. It was as good as anyone at GM Racing dared hope for--the C5-Rs were only part way into their second season of competition and still running the original "narrow track" (i.e., essentially stock C5 width) chassis, while the ORECA Vipers had already won the GTS class three straight times in France.
The new wider-bodied, wide-track chassis C5-Rs (built to the limits of the class regulations, rather than to factory specs) debuted later last summer and quickly proved to be highly competitive with the Vipers. In a promising first outing, at Mosport, the "new" C5-R was edged out of a victory over the all-conquering Vipers by mere fractions of a second, and followed that up by severely thrashing the Vipers in Texas and with a hard fought victory in the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. The Vipers, in turn, avenged those losses with end-of-the-season victories at Laguna Seca and Las Vegas. It was some utterly superb racing, regardless of which "side" you were on.
Daimler/Chrysler, in addition to hemorrhaging red ink in its US operations, changed its emphasis in road racing for the '01 racing season. The familiar and fearsome red ORECA Vipers would no longer be competing against the C5-Rs in the American Le Mans Series, at the Rolex/Daytona 24-hour race, or at Le Mans.
Instead, ORECA would field open-cockpit Chrysler-Mopar LMP 900 prototypes and go head-to-head with the dominant Audi R8s. ORECA would continue to build GTS-Rs for customers, but there would be no more direct factory involvement in the Viper camp. The second-gen C5-Rs would continue to receive evolutionary improvements, but there wouldn't be a new and/or different C5-R. The real unknown for 2001 would be the Saleen S7-R (see Driver's Seat, July '01 and "Sorrow in Sebring," Aug. '01), a thinly disguised prototype racer, financed by Steve Saleen and his backers, engineered and constructed by English race car builder Ray Mallock LLC, and based on an as-yet-to-be-built, supposedly road-going supercar.
The C5-Rs more than amply proved their mettle--and their ability to withstand 24 hours of solid racing--by decisively taking an overall win at the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona early this year. A few weeks later the factory racers again strutted their stuff in the ALMS season opener (Daytona is sanctioned by a different racing organization) by winning the GTS class at Texas Motor Speedway, scene of the C5-R's first-ever victory. Then, at Sebring, the Corvettes got whupped by Steve Saleen's S7-R funnycar, in its first public outing. In many respects, the Corvette team beat itself with a series of minor miscues and several instances of plain ol' bad racing luck. Regardless, the Saleen racer acquitted itself very respectably and was very fast--not good signs for the Corvettes.
Next on the schedule after Sebring was THE race--Le Mans. The C5-R Corvettes were assured an invitation from the ACO (Automobile Club de l'Ouest, the organizing/sanctioning body for Le Mans), because of their performances in the 2000 race and victories in the ALMS.
Much like the Indy 500, Le Mans is spectacle and ceremony, with a race thrown in for good measure. At Indy, the entire month of May is occupied with race-related activities, gradually and inexorably leading up to the 500-miler that's traditionally held on Memorial Day weekend. At Le Mans, the ritual is drawn out even longer, with the "preliminaries" beginning in early May (Sunday the 6th, this year) for a race that'll be conducted in mid-June (Saturday and Sunday, the 16th and 17th), with the first sessions of preliminary practice.
Leading up to that first official practice, most of the speculation centered on the GTS class. True, Team ORECA would not be directly contesting GTS with their big bad red Vipers, promoting (in the minds of many) the C5-Rs from challengers to favorites. But there would be four "privateer" GTS-Rs entered.
Plus, four of the Saleen S7-Rs were signed up: the Konrad car that had won at Sebring, a pair of Saleen-Allen Speedlab (i.e. factory) cars, and an entry from an English team, RML, which just happened to be the S7-R's designer/builder, Ray Mallock Limited (one Speedlab entry was withdrawn before the pre-lim practices started). Three S7-Rs and four Vipers against two Corvettes. Those odds sounded kinda like Custer versus the Sioux and Cheyenne nations back in 1876.
That one day of practice wasn't especially encouraging for the Corvette crew. Early in the morning session, the No. 64 C5-R (Andy Pilgrim, Frank Freon, and Kelly Collins) experienced a steering gear problem and ended up sitting alongside the course for most of the four-hour session, awaiting a tow back to the garages. When the morning session ended, the ORECA-built Larbre Competition Viper GTS-R was the fastest GTS racer. While the C5-Rs had no real problems in the afternoon session, they didn't run as well as some had expected. The Speedlab No. 60 S7-R, with Terry Borcheller up, set fastest time in GTS with a hot lap of 3.54.448 (on an 8.45-mile long course!), followed by the Larbre Viper, and the Corvettes trailed the S7-R by about four seconds.
The LMP900 class (900kg minimum weight, 6.0L naturally-aspirated or 4.0L turbocharged, open cockpit prototype) Audi R8s, last year's overall winners, were again the fastest cars on track, period. The Cadillac Northstar LMP prototypes were back, drastically reworked from 2000, but looking relatively unchanged. Two venerable British marques had prototype racers entered: MG in the LMP675 category (for lighter-weight, smaller displacement, open-cockpit racers), and Bentley returned for the first time in years with a pair of absolutely stunning, dark British Racing Green with silver accents "EXP Speed 8" coupes in LM GTP (essentially identical to LMP900, with enclosed cockpits, slightly narrower tires, and slightly larger air restrictors which allow a little more power). At the bottom of the Le Mans race car hierarchy is the GT class, for production class racers, and long the domain of the 911 Porsches. There were 10 of the 911 GT3-R and -RS models entered--and one lone Callaway C12, looking both beautiful and menacing, and turning faster laps than most of the Porsches!
Program Manager Doug Fehan wasn't particularly concerned about the C5-Rs less-than-sterling times versus the Saleens and Vipers. "Everything went really well for Corvette racing. The new wing tested out very well and we're really excited about some new aero tweaks that worked out well, and we've got great power. Between now and the race in June, we've got to solve an electrical problem that we've chased all day. We've also had a suspension problem on the 64 car, which we remedied immediately. Both of these are probably the result of some shipping damage incurred on the way over from the US. We'll really go through this car and make sure there isn't anything else that might have been damaged them. Other than that, we had a pretty good test and we're looking forward to coming back next month."
LET THE SHOW BEGIN...
On the surface, not much happened over the following five weeks. No race cars shattered the quiet of the French countryside. Which isn't to say that the teams weren't busy attending their charges, ensuring that the cars were as perfectly prepared as was humanly possible for THE race.
Then Le Mans sprang back to life on Monday and Tuesday, June 11th and 12th, for scrutineering (tech inspections) of all entrants in the 24-hour race. And it's literally the city that comes alive, as scrutineering is done at the Place des Jacobins, smack dab in the center of old Le Mans, with the 13th-century Gothic cathedral of St. Julien overlooking 48 of the finest and fastest road racers in the world while each is inspected from top to bottom. Each team also had to provide a crash test certificate (yes, a C5-R has been crashed and smashed in a laboratory to verify its crashworthiness!), and each driver demonstrated his ability to extract himself from the car, while behind the wheel and harnessed, in no more the 7 seconds. "Conformity" stickers are then applied (the Le Mans equivalent of a Good Housekeeping "Seal of Approval.") The final stop is, "Smile! Say cheese!" time for the official team (car, drivers, and crew) photographs.
Then it was time to get dead serious, as the first of two days of official practice and ultimately qualifying began bright and early Wednesday morning, June 13th. In keeping with the round-the-clock nature of the Le Mans race, practice sessions were run both in daylight and well into the night. The sessions went well for Team Corvette, with both C5-Rs getting dialed in and running very well. Ron Fellows in No. 63 managed to run a fraction of a second quicker than Andy Pilgrim's best in No. 64. But, once again, the No. 60 Saleen with Borcheller driving was the fastest GTS racer, and the Larbre Viper GTS-R was also quicker, again. Next door, in the Cadillac garages, there was an air of cautious optimism.
Neither Northstar LMP was turning the lap times that the team had hoped for, and both cars were 5-7 seconds off the blistering pace set by the works Audi R8s, but the cars were responding well to adjustments and, all things considered, the Cad drivers were fairly pleased with the "new and improved" racers.
Thursday, June 14; day and night practice, and final qualifying. Once the checkered flag fell on the final night session, well, that would be it until 4 p.m. Saturday, when the green flag would be waved--the start of the 69th 24 Heures du Mans. Friday would be a day off of sorts, a drivers parade in downtown Le Mans, and a lot of hours for the crews to give their steeds a final going over.
It was mid-morning when Ron Fellows, striving to wrest every iota of speed from No. 63, pushed just beyond the envelope and lost it in a big way in the Michelin chicane. The Corvette backed into a tire barrier, causing fairly extensive damage to the aft end. By late afternoon, the Pratt & Miller crew had managed to completely reconstruct the shattered C5-R.
Except for the fact that everyone seemed to be turning quicker laps, there was not a lot of shuffling of the grid in the final session. The Audis were the class of the field, with the No. 1 R8 cranking off a phenomenal 3:32.429. The real shocker was when the No. 5 Cadillac edged ahead of the Bentleys. In GTS, it was still Saleen (with Borcheller in No. 60--again!) recording a superb 3:52.849 lap, three full seconds ahead of the Larbre Viper, followed by the other S7-Rs, the two Millennium Yellow C5-Rs, and the other Vipers. Another stunner was the Aspen Knolls Callaway C12-R nabbing the pole for GT--ahead of all 10 of the Porsches!
I arrived in Le Mans Thursday afternoon and got out to the circuit in time to see no. 64's engine swap performed and to look around a bit. Then, after a highly enjoyable dinner at a country auberge with several other US media types (Matt DeLorenzo of Road & Track, Jack Keebler from Motor Trend, and actor/writer Tim Considine, who was on hand for Corvette Quarterly) and GM "brass" including Dave Hill, Rick Baldick, and Lisa Stanick of Corvette Brand Management, Chevrolet Communications Director Tom Wilkinson, GM Racing's Executive Director Herb Fishel, and Cadillac's Director of Communications Jeff Kuhlman, we returned to the circuit to watch the final night practice and qualifying.
The sights, the sounds, the sensations of the cars streaking out of the blackness, across the start/finish line and past the pits and garages, and off into the inky night is incredible, almost sensory overload for a racing fanatic like myself. I finally gave in to fatigue and caught a ride back to the hotel some time after midnight, having already been in France for nearly 13 hours following an 11-hour nonstop flight from Los Angeles--and really hated to leave. There's an incredible sense of history about the facility. I think you really have to be here to fully comprehend; it's like no place and nothing else.
RACE DAY
Race day, Saturday, June 16th, started exceedingly early, with a 45-minute warm-up session. The grounds and surrounding area were utterly jammed with humanity. Considering the changing weather, which in the past day had gone from bright, clear, and sunny to heavily overcast with drizzles, it seemed as though every team was testing setups with intermediate and rain tires, as well as "cold track" (normally for nighttime running) rubber. And during that abbreviated period, No. 64 pulled off course and parked with zero oil pressure, just past the Dunlop curve and the famous "Tyre" bridge, and less than a mile from the pits. The dead Corvette was flatbedded back to the garage, along with one of the Panoz LMP07s (which had gone offroad at the Indianapolis curve about 2 miles before the finish line) when the officials called a full-course yellow.
The problem on 64 proved to be an errant oil pump drive belt (the C5-Rs use dry sump engine lubrication systems with external pumps). Rather than take a chance on the engine being wounded, the crew immediately went to work removing the "old" engine and readying a backup Katech 7.0-liter LS1 for fitment.
Meanwhile, at 11 a.m., after the track clear following the warm-up session, there was a Le Mans first, a vintage race. Included were 55 veteran Le Mans race cars of widely disparate vintages. The most notable driver present was Sir Stirling Moss, who received an astounding ovation from the crowds packed solid in the stands along the pit straight.
Finally, at 12:15 p.m., the 2001 competitors were rolled out and positioned trackside along the inside of the course, tails against the pit wall, as the official starting ceremonies and rituals began. A few minutes before 4 p.m., the field headed out around the circuit for a warm-up lap, led by the black Cad Seville pace car. And as if an omen of what was to come, things got screwy, quickly. For reasons as yet unexplained, the Callaway was back in its garage when the cars took to the track and instead of starting the race from the GT class pole, it was relegated to waiting at the pit lane exit for the entire field to pass before assuming a position at the back. And as the rest of the field circulated around the track, two cars, the No. 82 GT class Porsche and the No.
62 Saleen (the Ray Mallock entry) spun off course. At roughly 4 p.m., the 69th 24 Hours of Le Mans was started, and within 10 minutes, chaos reigned supreme, as the threatened rain materialized in a torrential downpour over vast portions of the track and surrounding environs--with all but a handful of the 48 racers trying to maintain some semblance of control on slicks. The pits quickly jammed as the cars came in for changes to rain tires, and the conditions were treacherous enough that a full-course caution was called, bringing out the pace car just minutes after the contest began.
Over the next three or so hours, it continued to rain intermittently, at times very heavily. The pace car was called out a second time to lead the field during another full-course caution. The intense rain was beginning to cause various electrical glitches on numerous race cars. During the media dinner in GM's pavilion, No. 5 Cad LMP driver Max Angelelli stopped in to chat after finishing his first driving stint and offered a unique insight into racing conditions in the rain when he casually described how the car was aquaplaning on some portions of the track, on rain tires, because the water was so deep on the racing surface that, while the "wet" tires would knife through the water, the flat bottom of the racer would literally begin floating or skimming over the water! All the while, as two of the four Vipers retired after crashes and a third was experiencing electrical woes, and one of the three Saleens had broken and been withdrawn, the two C5-Rs ran away from the remainder of the GTS class.
We, GM's guests, had been invited by the ACO to view the race from their pavilion on the inside of the Mulsanne corner, at the end of the nearly 4-mile-long Mulsanne straight, at the far south corner of the circuit. It was a strange sensation to be sitting in a covered grandstand, being served champagne, while it rained and race cars screamed out of the night toward the roughly 110-degree righthander, braking hard and downshifting multiple times, then exiting as hard as possible in the wet, skittering around as they tried vainly to lay down some power and kicked up incredible roostertails as they accelerated into the darkness. No. 64 was solidly in the lead for GTS and had moved up to 9th overall, followed by 63, the 60 and (much further back) 62 Saleens, and a lone Viper.
Some time around midnight, we headed back to the pit and garage area. Most of the group got rides back to the various lodgings (GM had corporate and guests put up at two different hotels and two chateaus). I couldn't get enough of the experience and instead headed up to the GM suite directly above the Corvette garages and pits, finally calling it quits after 2 a.m. It must have been the adrenaline, because I was still pumped up and had yet to crash and burn from jet lag.
Sunday morning, June, 17th. Somehow, I'm up by 6 and, after a quick but incredible breakfast (a dollop of fresh fruits, Norwegian smoked salmon, and a small portion of scrambled eggs with caviar, washed down by a couple of dinky cups of unbelievably strong--and black--French coffee) I'm off to the track by 7 a.m. The rain has stopped, momentarily. During intervening hours, the 63 and 64 cars had swapped the GTS lead several times. No. 64 had on off-course excursion that resulted in a punctured tire and an unscheduled pit stop, and 63 had also spun off course--at the same time and place as the No. 2 Audi R8, with no contact or damage to either car. And, disappointingly, after looking great and intermittently running impressively well, the Callaway C12-R had been withdrawn.
Then, Frank Freon courts disaster in No. 64. First it's a 15-minute pitstop thanks to a starter failure. Once he's back on track, Freon spins 64 twice, at two different sites, within a couple of laps. Concurrently, 63 seems to be performing flawlessly, with Fellows, O'Connell, and Pruett in 6th overall; one Saleen is left (No. 62 parked with an engine failure); and No. 58, the last Viper of the four that started, is in its garage while the Larbre crew try to patch it together enough to finish the race.
About the time the surviving racers have all gone back onto slicks, the rain returns. The Corvettes seem to be unfazed; Fellows in No. 63 leads GTS and has the C5-R up to 6th overall. The No. 60 Saleen is holding onto 2nd in GTS and 10th overall, and the 64 Corvette is 3rd in GTS, a couple laps back of the S7-R.
The factory Audi team (cars 1 and 2) is utterly dominating the race; the sole surviving Bentley is 13 laps back, in 3rd, and the lone Cad LMP is hanging on in 9th, but losing precious minutes on each stop due to a starter problem. Shortly after 1 p.m., the last Saleen nosed into its garage, trailing heavy blue smoke and sounding as though its 7.0L V-8 was firing on six or seven cylinders. The field is down to 21 cars still officially in the contest, and that includes the Team Larbre Viper and the Speedlab No. 60 Saleen.
Around 3:00, the rains returned again, with a vengeance, once again bringing out the pace car to "neutralize the race cars" as the officials phrased it. The C5-Rs had built up such a lead that it was mathematically impossible for the 60 Saleen or the 58 Viper to catch either car in the remaining time, if either the S7-R or Viper was running right instead of being worked on in hopes of avoiding DNFs, so team manager Gary Pratt called both cars into the garage to sit out the rain and not put the cars at risk. It was a controversial move, one that irked a lot of the Europeans, and even frustrated a few of the GM contingent since, as the Corvettes sat for about half an hour, two of the GT class Porsches caught up with, then lapped, the GTS leaders.
Shortly before 4 p.m,. both Vettes headed back out, as did the gravely wounded Saleen and the Larbre Viper, so they could be counted as running at the finish. When the checkered flag fell, the pair of C5-Rs crossed the finish line in formation, 63 slightly ahead of and to the inside of 64. No. 63 finished 1st in GTS and 8th overall, logging 278 laps (2,349 miles). No. 64 was 2nd in class and 14th overall, having completed 271 laps.
Later that afternoon, Herb Fishel called the results, "...the greatest victory in Corvette history." And Fishel's as qualified as anyone to make a statement like that, as he is one of the few persons still employed at GM who worked directly with and for Zora. Doug Fehan said the win was, "...a total team effort...I'm proud of these drivers, the crews, and all of the people at GM who helped make this win possible. Perhaps the best summation was offered by Speedvision announcer (and racer) Derek Daly, who stated, "Nobody at Le Mans knows the Corvettes won at Daytona, but everyone at Daytona will know that Corvettes won class at Le Mans."
It must have been around 7:30 Sunday evening when five of us (R&T's Matt DeLorenzo, M/T's Jack Keebler, Jeff Kuhlman of Cadillac, Kyle Johnson of GM Communications, and myself) got together and headed into the center of town, just blocks from our hotel, the Concorde, in search of a late meal, hopefully at a cafe with TVs so we could watch the CART Detroit Grand Prix. We ended up within a few hundred yards of the Place des Jacobins and the St. Julien cathedral, in a place called Dakota, dining on French Tex-Mex and watching American open-wheel cars racing on the streets of Belle Isle. Go figure.
I departed France around 2 p.m. the next day. The jet lag that I'd avoided for the previous four days finally hit me, hard, and I slept, very soundly, for most of the 11-hour flight home.