FROM THE SUBLIME LE MANS TO THE NEW LIME ROCK

It always seems somewhat bizarre that the ALMS calendar has us going straight from the largest track of the season to the smallest, but that's the way it is. We are all looking forward to getting back into the American Le Mans Series and Olivier and I have got a lot more winning to do to catch up with the #3 car.

Lime Rock Park has done a lot of work in the last 12 months, which includes some track reconfiguration and a new surface, but it's still a short 1.51 mile course. We'll have to see exactly what it's like once we're there and out on track.

Looking back on Le Mans, I have to say it was an amazing race which had a lot of promise and was - at one stage - looking extremely good. Our two Corvettes were equally paced and Olivier, Max and I were really hoping for a good, clean, trouble-free race.

We had a good start in the #64 car and I managed to make up a place at the start and sat behind Jan [Magnussen] in the other car, circulating together until the first pit stop. We cycled through the drivers, with all of us doing a double stint, but at the end of Max's time behind the wheel we had a problem with the alternator. The team had to change it which took a bit more than 5 minutes but cost us nearly two laps to our competitors. We were a little bit on the back foot then but we soon found out that the 007 Aston Martin had exactly the same problem - a failed alternator - which put us back up to third in class.

That's pretty much how it stayed for the rest of the race, although we never stopped trying to catch up and we got to the point where we were nearly back on the lead lap with the 009 Aston and our 63 car. This happened while it was raining and Olivier, who was in the car, drove fantastically for four hours and got us back into contention. Max then took over and unfortunately had an `off' and broke the floor. That meant an extra pit stop to fix that, losing us another lap and a half and that pretty much cemented us into the third position in which we finished. We just had to make sure we finished third.

Conditions during the race were changeable to say the least. The first half of the race was dry and the second half from about 4am on Sunday morning was wet - on and off - through until the end. In that first period of rain, when it was still dark, it was treacherous. The track was so slippery and you had to be very, very careful how you drove. I overshot the first chicane on the Mulsanne twice while we were on the intermediate tyres and we realised they weren't working well enough so came in and put full wets on. The idea at that point was just to keep the car on the track but circulate as quickly as possible.

It was frustrating because it had looked, after the test day, practice and qualifying, that we were going to have the measure of the Aston Martins in terms of speed. When we looked back over the data after the race it seems though that they still had a bit of an advantage - particularly in the night and in cool conditions.

With the changing conditions we at least know now how all the tyres work on our car. Soft, medium and hard compounds, slicks, intermediates and wets - we've gone through the whole range of Michelin tyres now which is a good thing for the rest of the American Le Mans Series season. We know we can run the car well on low downforce, and we developed quite a different philosophy in how to set up the car at Le Mans this year. I'm sure that at certain tracks like Road America, where you can run less downforce, that will be a really interesting place for us to try some other bits and pieces we learnt at Le Mans. Other areas like fuel mileage, and saving fuel, are lessons we learnt in France which will benefit us when we get back to the cellulosic E85R fuel we use in the States. There's an awful lot there we can use.

It seems that at a lot of the races so far this year, Lady Luck has been sleeping for Olivier and me. Every time we've gone to a track we've been fast but something has always tripped us up; at Sebring it was an axle failure, at Long Beach we made a mess of our strategy and ran out of time, and then we got to Salt Lake and had refuelling problems. St Petersburg is the only one we've won so far. We feel that we can't quite get going this year and every race there's some little issue or other whereas in the last few years it's been pretty smooth and flowed well.

We can't quite pin it down. Olivier is driving fantastically and I feel I'm driving as well as I've ever done but there have been a few new elements. We had a change of crew chief at the beginning of the year - Ray Gongla who'd been with us for 5 years has taken a non-travelling role in the factory - and Mike West has taken over. Mike's a great mechanic and very experienced but he's new to the role of crew chief and learning a lot. That's the way it is, you learn on the job, and it was the same for Ray too. Communication and relationships take time to gel completely, what's expected and how different people do things.

Looking ahead now to the remainder of the ALMS, I can't wait to get to Mosport and Road America. They are both fantastic high speed circuits which are really challenging and great to drive. We've also got a street circuit at Detroit which will be our home race and a massive event for us and we did well there last year. Then there's always the big one, Petit Le Mans, towards the end of the year and Laguna Seca which I always really enjoy as it's the end of the season and a fun race track. It's got the end of year feel to it.

On a personal front, having done the London Marathon again in April, my next running challenge will be the Beachy Head marathon, near Eastbourne in Sussex at the end of October, just after the Laguna Seca race. It's completely different to the London marathon as it's very hilly and a bit of a strange one. It's not marked out or measured - it's a bit of a fun run in that respect - and is nearly all on trails or paths. There's only one marker on the whole run and that says “you are roughly half way” but that moves every single year and you never really know where it's going to be! It's very relaxed and you can take your dog on the run with you if you want, walk, jog or run.

London was very enjoyable but very intense with all the other competitors and people I was running with as we all wanted to get round in around, or under, 3 hours. They are people who've done a lot of training, very focused and who are very competitive as well. It's quite strange being in the middle of that atmosphere and not in a racing car. I'm definitely going back next year with the aim of running it in under 3 hours…perhaps the training will start with the Beachy Head race.

Wish us luck for the rest of the ALMS season, and keep up with everything that's going on through my website.

Oliver Gavin

July 2008