Northamptonshire's Oliver Gavin has been a busy man over the last four weeks. A personal best time of 3 hours and 10 seconds in the London Marathon, a hectic test and development schedule for Corvette Racing's new GT challenger in North America, and an appearance discussing jet lag on the recent BBC1 documentary “10 Things You Need To Know About Sleep”.

However, all this will pale into relative insignificance on the 13-14th June when the 36-year-old racing driver takes on the legendary 24 Hour race at Le Mans in France.

He, along with his team mates Olivier Beretta from Monaco and Marcel Fassler from Switzerland, will be pitting their talent, wits and - above all - powers of endurance against 54 other cars for the jewel in the crown of international sports car racing. The 24-hour race is a huge test of both man and machine, and takes place on a 14 kilometre circuit which is partly made up of public roads. While drivers will have the luxury of a few hours sleep in between their stints behind the wheel, their mechanics and engineers will be working for 36 hours or more non-stop in the lead up to, during and after the race. It really is endurance racing in the raw.

Oliver, who lives with his wife and three children in Yardley Hastings, Northamptonshire, will be racing for the American Corvette Racing team in a Chevrolet Corvette C6.R. This will be the eighth time that the former F1 test driver has entered the endurance marathon and he has won four times so far. It will also be the very last time that Corvette's C6.R GT1 model will be raced, so Oliver is aiming firmly at a place in the history books - to say goodbye with a victory.

“Le Mans this year will be fantastic but at the same time a bit sad,” says Oliver. “It will be the end of an era. We have been racing this car for a decade now and its engine noise, bright yellow bodywork and beefy styling have become really well known and loved around the world; especially at Le Mans, which is always a bit surprising to me from a country known for its love of all things fine and chic!

“Corvette Racing will be continuing racing with a new car in the GT2 category of the American Le Mans Series against Porsches, Ferraris, Ford GTs and BMWs so there's plenty of great racing and excitement to come, but for now our focus is firmly on the big prize, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

“The race is always tough, no matter who your opposition is, and the weather has been a major factor the last two years as we've had torrential rain. We were unlucky in both 2007 and 2008 and were denied a run for the top step of the podium, but I'm hoping it will all go our way in June. It would be really special to be able to secure the very last win in the car's racing history.

“I'll tell you something, racing at Le Mans can make running a marathon look like a walk in the park!”

The 77th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans will begin at 3:00 pm on Saturday, 13th June and will finish at 3:00 pm on Sunday, 14th June. Practice begins on Wednesday, 10th June and flag-to-flag coverage of the race, qualifying and practice will be available at www.radiolemans.com