Le Mans 2004

Everything is done with so much time in hand in the build-up to the start of the Le Mans 24 Hours. Having pushed the cars out onto the track in what the French call an “ear of corn” formation, and the British might equally describe as “herringbone”, they stand there for the best part of three hours, surrounded by a mill of team members, photographers, dignitaries and heaven-alone knows who else. The time never seems to drag, however. The minutes pass quickly amid the noise and spectacle of the parade of drivers, the enthusiasm of Bruno Vandestick (the official commentator), and the distant glamour of the Hawaiian Tropic girls. Almost ignored is the playing of the competitor’s national anthems, although British fans weren’t slow to show their dismay this year when the thirty-seven UK drivers were hailed by the Stars & Stripes. A “technical difficulty” was the proffered excuse.

With the best part of forty minutes still remaining before the anticipated start the cars were moved out for the parade lap that would bring them round into their grid positions.

David Warnock, who had quite casually arrived only a few moments beforehand, pushed in his radio earplugs, pulled on his Nomex balaclava, zipped up his race suit, donned his helmet, and then twisted his tall frame in through the Porsche’s low doorway.

Strapped into the contoured Recaro driving seat, and with coolsuit and radio leads connected, David steered away from the pit wall to join the queue of cars heading away towards the Dunlop Chicane. Several of the leading cars, significantly, most of them prototypes, elected to complete a brief pitstop for a top-up of fuel and, in some cases, a change of tyres.

With the forecast suggesting a 30% chance of rain and track temperatures officially just 28 degrees, Saturday was shaping up to be the coolest day of the week so far, and some manufacturers were recommending a change of compounds.

David completed the lap and manoeuvred through the marshals and boy scouts, the latter holding the marker cards designating the grid positions of each car, to take up his slot alongside the Morgan Aero 8, to be started by New Zealander Neil Cunningham. Directly behind David was the Panoz Elan LMP1, sent there because, like the #36 WR LMP2 alongside it, and the #24 WR behind, not all the prototype’s drivers had completed their required qualifying laps. A fourth car, the #10 diesel-engined Taurus Lola, would have received the same penalty, but team owner Ian Dawson elected instead to start the car’s race from the pitlane, where the JMB Ferrari 360 team were battling to get their car ready. With a final word of encouragement from Mike Pickup, the track was cleared and David Warnock was on his own.

At exactly three fifty two the brand new Audi A6 pace car, one of 18 such cars supplied to the ACO for this year’s Le Mans, moved away at the head of a field of 48 cars – two short on expectations. The ACO have had enough practice over the years to know how best to judge this critical lap; the one that ensures that the race starts on the dot of four-o’clock. This year, with some 40 seconds still to go, the pace car appeared tentatively around the end of the wall that marks the beginning of the Ford Chicanes. It was early, and slowed to a crawl. Then, juggling the remaining seconds, it suddenly picked up speed over the final two turns. This opened up just enough of a gap for McNish and Davies to increase pace themselves, and they closed rapidly on the departing A6. It was a close shave, the pace car leaning heavily in its efforts to clear the track, nut nowhere near as close as the tussle between the two front row pace-setters. If the Audi R8 had wing mirrors in the conventional position, neither car would have escaped this wheel-banging with a full complement. Sam Li, the boss at Veloqx, had announced before the race that there would be no team orders this weekend, and here was perfect proof. These team-mates weren’t about to give an inch to the other, and they powered out of the Ford Chicane locked tightly side-by-side. Even before they crossed the line a significant gap had opened out between them and Andy Wallace, third in the #22 Zytek.

Further back down the grid – almost as far back as you can go – David Warnock must have been experiencing some very unfamiliar emotions. Imagine some of the thoughts going through his mind as he prepared to take his first ever rolling start at Le Mans, knowing that by the time he arrived at the line Jamie Davies and the leaders would be half way to the Mulsanne. “I had a bad night. I kept breaking out in clammy sweats, and hardly slept at all. Once I got onto the grid I felt fine. That’s when the adrenalin kicks in.” As David made the twitch through the final element of the Ford Chicane, Neil Cunningham in his slipstream was already under pressure from the Panoz, while the two WRs wouldn’t take long to pass them either.

By the end of the opening lap David had already been overtaken by all three, but was pulling comfortably clear of Cunningham. He was also maintaining close formation on the cars directly in front. Over the next few laps the gap back to Cunningham grew steadily, but David was hanging on well to the battle ahead between the Cirtek Ferrari 360, the Luc Alphand Porsche, and the #81 Racer’s Group 911 GT3-RSR. These early laps were looking comfortable for David, and after initially losing a few seconds to the #81, he began to recover the gap. Watching from the Ford Chicane, where a combination of four quick changes of direction is compressed into a couple of hundred yards, the PK car looked by far the smoothest of the Porsches. While his adversaries ahead snatched and fought their way between the kerbs, David’s progress appeared serene and unhurried. Checking the timing screen confirmed that such apparent ease can be deceptive, and his best of 4:20.612 was a good match for his immediate rivals. “That was the plan of action,” explained David. “Don’t race it! Mike told me to do laps of around 4:20, so I did. I could have gone for The Racer’s Group Porsche on the first lap. He had a bad exit on the first Mulsanne Chicane. I think he went too deep on his brakes, but I decided to hold station. There was a ding-dong battle going on between the Cirtek Ferrrari and the Yukos Porsche and I didn’t want to get involved.”

At two minutes beyond the hour David headed in to the pitlane to complete his opening stint. Having started in forty-seventh place, David had inherited seven spaces, thanks to other’s misfortunes, and was listed as eleventh in GT with 13 laps completed. This scheduled stop was an opportunity for a complete change, with the car given fresh tyres, fuel, and Jim Mathews. The American hung back as Piers Masarati helped a weary David Warnock clamber out of the driver’s seat, and then swiftly took his place. It was a typically slick pitstop by the PK Sport team.

Jim Matthews and the #78 Porsche maintained the form established in the first hour by David Warnock, circulating in similar times and, for the first half hour of his stint at least, not dropping any positions. Jim couldn’t quite match David’s best, but he repeatedly came close.

Early in what would be his twenty-fourth lap Jim slipped wide on the exit at Tertre Rouge and ran over the yellow and blue ribbed kerbs. It didn’t appear to upset either him or the car, and he pressed on. “On the next lap round I was coming into the Porsche Curves when the car went skiddy at the back, but I caught it,” said Jim later. “Then, in my rear-view mirror I saw an Audi going straight on.” It was a serious incident, and the R8 Matthews had glimpsed was the #8 Veloqx car with McNish at the wheel. The Scot crossed the gravel and t-boned the tyre wall. A heartbeat later he was joined by JJ Lehto in the Champion Audi, who clipped the Veloqx car a glancing blow at the back. A third vehicle, one of the GTS Ferraris, narrowly missed the two stricken Audis, ploughing across the gravel and just managing to reclaim the track without hitting anything. “The track was getting serious oiled,” offered Jim, “and I won’t claim it wasn’t me, but I simply don’t know.”

Matthews pressed on. For the time being all seemed well, and the dashboard display continued to reveal the right kind of figures. Seconds later, however, the safety cars were deployed, and Matthews found himself caught up in a crocodile of cars. “The temperatures started to go up under the caution,” he explained, “although I thought at first that it might just have been because we were going slow.” It wasn’t. Just as the hourly update confirmed Matthews as being logged in 35th place overall, 10th in GT, he was called in to the PK garage. It was very nearly the end of his scheduled stint anyway, but this one was going to last for fifty-two minutes.

There was clearly a problem with the engine cooling system and the team set-to to replace the damaged system, including the front radiators. Memories of 2001 must have been prominent in many minds within the PK pit garage, when three such replacements had cost the team a potential podium. Practised in the art, the mechanics were quickly into action and had Paul Daniels keyed up and ready to race by 18:45. Jacks out, car down, and away. Daniels was making his racing debut in the Le Mans 24 Hours, but it would be brief, if dramatic. Coming out of Tertre Rouge and about to speed down the most famous “straight” in motorsport, the magnificent Mulsanne, a thick white cloud erupted from underneath the car.

Daniels slowed immediately, but the first chicane was still coming up fast. “I’d been short-shifting all the way, keeping an eye on the temperatures. It was my outlap, and I wanted to make sure that everything was OK. Now I knew it wasn’t! I started to slow much earlier than usual, but the moment I touched the brakes, whoosh. There was nothing I could do.”

The back of the car cut away violently to his left and spun him through 180 degrees. The swing took him close to the Armco, and the rear three-quarters struck hard, bouncing him back into the track. “I could see maybe five cars coming straight for me, and that was effing scary, I can tell you!” Miraculously, the spin wasn’t over yet, and by the time he did stop revolving Paul’s Porsche was pointing the right way again.

With one eye on the Stack display and another on the road Daniels brought the car back to the pitlane as carefully as he could, coasting up outside the PK garage at just after seven o’clock. For the time being he stayed strapped into the car while the mechanics swarmed around, raising it on trolley wheels to ease the car inside. The timing screen confirmed three hours of the race completed, with the #78 car logged as 46th overall, sixteenth in LMGT on 27 laps. The physical damage to the car was really very slight – a graze and some scuffing to the left hand side, and to the wing endplate on that same side – but the mechanical damage was evidently more serious. Raised up on the jacks once again a renewed sense of urgency spread through the team. Nobody was hanging around and the mechanics jumped to their toolboxes and rifled quickly through the drawers for the tools they needed next. David Warnock, who’d been back to the team motorhome for a rest following his opening stint, appeared in the entranceway with a look of slight bemusement spreading across his features. When he’d left the garage two hours ago everything had been going so well.

“It’s obviously going to be one of those races again,” he said with resignation. “The car felt really good to me. I was taking it gently through the Porsche Curves, where it was a little skippy, but apart from that it felt so comfortable. The handling, the brakes, everything. Now you just don’t know what engine damage has been done.”

As the Panoz Elan was going backwards into the wall at the Ford Chicane the oil was being drained from the engine of the #78 Porsche, but the fluid was so hot that the mechanic scalded his hand and inadvertently let go of the union, splashing hot oil over several others nearby. While the Kondo Dome was limping back to the pits with a puncture, the initial prognosis in the PK garage was not good. It looked as thought the engine had suffered this time, but how seriously? Mike Pickup feared the worst, but nobody was about to give up yet. Half an hour’s frantic activity later and the guys were still all over – and under – the car like agitated ants, and the French pit marshals kept gazing on, slightly bewildered. David Warnock was just one of several observers aching to know what was wrong, yet the look on his face was verging on one of dejection. In fact, the garage was almost as full of anxious spectators as it was of engineers and mechanics. It was a tense atmosphere, with eye contact difficult to hold and emotions in check, save an occasional ripple of shoulder shrugs.

Forty minutes into the stoppage and two Porsche technicians had taken over the search for answers. Their exchanges, in German of course, seemed to accentuate the air of seriousness but, despite the ongoing activity around all four corners of the car nothing had actually been fixed as yet and the emphasis was still on discovering the true nature of the problem. With four hours gone the PK Porsche was no longer exactly running, as such, but it was still logged as 48th (and last) and not yet “abandon”. A further deputation then arrived from Porsche.

By half past eight the situation had become, if anything, more confusing to those awaiting news. There had briefly been renewed activity underneath the engine, and the radiator rebuild at the front had been completed and the valence replaced. “It may be going out again” said one of the mechanics hopefully. Some people were even smiling, albeit hesitantly at first. The old wheels and tyres were taken away and the Porsche mechanics began to pack up their kit. When they walked out a mix of renewed hope and confusion pervaded the general mood. What was going on? Surely fresh wheels and tyres, combined with the fitting of a brand new rear wing, suggested that Paul Daniels might yet be going out once again? Then reality dawned. This was Mike Pickup’s typical attention to detail. No PK racecar can ever be allowed to look the worse for wear, even in retirement, and #78 at Le Mans 2004 was to be no exception.

“Something has gone wrong with the electronics,” explained Mike Pickup. “We won’t know exactly what the problem is until the engine can be taken back to the workshops and stripped, but it is clearly damaged inside and we can’t continue.” His disappointment is tangible and heartfelt, as always. “On record,” he adds, “I must say thanks to Dunlop for some fantastic tyres, and also to Porsche for putting in such a huge effort to try and find – and fix – the problem. I’m especially grateful to AON for their continued support, and sorry that we haven’t been able to give them the kind of result they deserve.”

A few days ago he said how much he dreaded being one of those 50% of entrants that fail to go the distance. “Mortified” was how he described the feeling. Hearing him speak his thanks tonight made that sentiment all too easy to understand.

Last Updated: 29 June 2004