Our column dedicated to the Le Mans Drivers Club is dedicated to Martin Short. Martin raced himself five times at Le Mans. His best result was a fourth place in 2007, close to the podium which could have been awarded to the Pescarolo Judd if Article 25.2.2 had been applied. However, History cannot be rewritten…
Martin, what are your best Le Mans memories ? Why ?
« Le Mans gave us the best memories of my racing career, everything about it was magical, from getting ready……well actually all that work wasn’t so much fun…. to setting up the garage, like a holiday atmosphere because the serious stuff hadn’t started, and then the fun of scrutineering and figuring out how were were going to get the car or cars to the centre of the town. The things start to slowly build up, get more serious. I would enjoy myself cycling round the track, taking it easy, making sure everything was going in the right direction but leaving the guys to do their own thing. They enjoyed it so much themselves of course, and I just became a nuisance the them ; ). And then the testing, and qualifying, and the tension ramps up and up, and suddenly it starts to get really serious, and then a pressure relief with the parade in town, and then boom. Saturday arrives and the time goes so fast….. really fast if you’ve got a problem! And then its almost a relief to start the race, and to see if the racing gods are with you or against you!
The best memories, there are so many….. lying in 4th place overall in our very first Le Mans in 2004, and then being hit by Sébastien Bourdais, doing hidden damage to the suspension, and then it became a bad memory!
Leading Le Mans overall in 2005 for half a lap (the wrong half!) with me driving, realising that I must be close to the leader as I could see helicopters, and not realising that it was me until I got out! There was a problem with the radio…..or the team didn’t want to tell me as they thought I might go off at the shock! And then the power steering leak that sent us down the order…..
2007 when we finished 4th, but really it should have been third, and on the podium, my dream, but a certain French car parked before the finish line and finished shall we say in a dubious fashion, but wasn’t penalised. I didn’t protest as it was a French manufacturer, back at Le Mans……what would or could they do? But that was amazing anyway. »
The worst, if any ? Why ?
“The crash in 2004 was bad after being 4th. The car was fantastic. We could have made it to the podium.
2006 with the Radical was tough, but we finished. I think the worst thing was having bicycles stolen from our Motorhome behind the paddock by kids ! Little shits : 0 »
Have you one -or several- special anecdotes of your Le Mans races you have not -or scarcely- spoken about ?
« I think I covered them above, but the Nissan engined Dallara provided some funny stories. The car would not run above idle before the race start after an engine change. The race started and it would still die as soon as you touched the throttle. We had one hour to fix it after the race start. Eventually, with 15 minutes left to go, I went to Michael Krumm and said he was going to have to do the hardest and most dangerous drive of his life and that was to do a lap of Le Mans at idle speed, juts to qualify us to carry on in the race if we managed to fix the engine afterwards. He got in, started the car, but when he lifted the cutch it just stalled every time. Suddenly I shouted on the radio for him to start the car in gear, clutch up. He tried it, it jerked up the pit lane, fired and slowly left the pits at about 10 kph, in idle revs, with no throttle. I was terrified for him, and all I could think about was how steep the hill was to the Dunlop bridge and would he make it? He did, and he returned god knows how long later, by which time my chief engineer Mike Hurley had a brain wave. The Nismo guys, with their lap tops couldn’t achieve anything at this time. Mike got a long socket extension, reached down in the front off the engine, and with a hammer tapped the extension, which was on the crank sensor. He leaned back out and said “try that”. It fired up instantly, singing on the throttle, and off they went!
The second story is that Bobby Verdon Roe was driving that car, in his first le mans, and was being lapped by Soheil Ayari in the Pescarolo that should have won. Bobby pulled into the slipstream and found himself travelling significantly faster than he had every done before, and was then shocked to find Atari braked early (because of course he was going 20 or 30 mph faster! Bobby hit him and had a big off that scared him to death. He eventually after an hour managed to get the car back to the pits. The car stopped. he jumped out, didn’t say a word, and ran out of the garage and we didn’t see him again! The car had a lot of damage, and we sent it out again I think, but were politely asked to withdraw it as the 75% distance hadn’t been met. That was the incident that cost Henri his Le mans win. I think he blamed Ayari, but he was hit by Bobby. »
