Ready to fight...

With no entry since August I had every intention of writing another after the 6 Hours of Nurburgring, probably entitled 'The blue army marches on' or something like that, but we'll call that the overly optimistic post that never was! If you have a career in motorsport it tends to consume almost all of your time, and I mean ALL of your time. But that's ok because I love racing. If I'm not racing I'm watching it, or reading about it, or talking about it with others. If I'm not doing that I'm teaching younger drivers to race, watching races from the past or looking at what's coming in the future. Or I'm training for it, preparing for it, and of course the endless travelling to participate in all of this. It's been this way largely for about 15 years, I'm an old school racer, Formula Ford-no nonsense bred, a calm and relaxed person off track and in general it takes a lot to p'ss me off in this sport. It's a good thing, if not I'd have given up long ago! But this year so far has been the ride of a lifetime and aside from getting extremely p'ssed off recently it's about to get even more interesting.

The Nurburgring was a great race for KCMG. Nick Tandy and I grabbed the pole position thanks mainly to him (my lap was rubbish) and we went on to dominate one of the hottest races I've ever done. With no cooling of any sort in the coupe prototype the air is very warm and the Nurburgring gives you no time to rest, a tough way to spend 2 hours in 32 degree heat. We lost the lead only once after the first driver changes, but I retook it after closing down on Rusinov in the #26 G'Drive (our championship arch rivals), and then Richard Bradley and Nick finished off the job, a satisfying and dominant victory to extend our lead in the LMP2 World Endurance Championship. We didn't expect the Nurburgring to suit our car, it's narrow (to conform to 2017 regs) and low drag meaning great top speed but a touch less overall downforce, and winning there shows how much our engineer Greg Wheeler and Oreca had brought the 05 along. Remember we only started running this car from concept, to build, to race, earlier this season. It also showed how hard KCMG had worked on pit-stops and strategy. G'Drive, Onroak and the Ligier had been soundly beaten.


I've got huge respect for G-Drive/Onroak. As a team they're the benchmark in LMP2, they build fast cars, and are ruthless in every sense. They also have in the #26 car three excellent drivers. I have a lot of respect for them too. Roman Rusinov and I raced last year and on form he's bloody good, Julien Canal just gets faster and faster and Sam Bird is probably one of the best LMP2 drivers at the moment along with Ryan Dalziel. No mistakes and fast as f''k, these are the guys who set the mark for the rest of us, and it's a challenge the likes of Richard and I have so far risen to. All of this was proved correct when G-Drive beat us at COTA in Austin. The scene of our first FIA WEC victory as KCMG in 2014, Richard Bradley and I grabbed the pole position having had only 9 minutes to do it, probably one of the better laps I've driven under pressure. The car had broken down exiting the pit lane and whilst we recovered to the pits and then did our thing, a penalty relegated us to the back of the LMP2 grid. I'd broken down into the steep uphill turn one, and whilst I didn't move a mm while cars were on track, after the red flag my car rolled as I tried to get started. We need the clutch depressed and some level of throttle so holding the car still is tricky.


Despite retaking the lead during the race and beginning to dominate once again thanks also due to the return of our Le Mans winning team-mate Nico Lapierre, G-Drive played the full course yellows well and with a touch of luck out-maneuvered us. Fair play to them, by the time I was wheel to wheel on track with Sam I couldn't compete with him, defended as long as I could but ultimately lost out. Sometimes you're competitors just beat you, and with that team and those drivers I expect they will never give up and losing only makes them try harder. We're trying to win a championship so 2nd place was great and we focused on learning from our mistakes and moving on to the Asian part of the season in Japan and China. We bid a sad goodbye to Nico Lapierre, as the mega Nick Tandy returns for the rest of the season. I hope we'll be team-mates again, Nico is one of the best drivers I've been around and one of the nicest and funniest too, I wish him well in WTCC and anything else he gets in. You can be sure it won't go faster!



We arrived at Fuji Speedway confident of our strength again, particularly in straight line speed. We usually have 5-6km/h on our main rival G-Drive in the draggy Ligier and we need it, as they certainly out perform us in the high-downforce sections. This is the standard trade-off of drag/aero in a homologation formula where development is only allowed every so often. To our surprise in Free Practice at Fuji Speedway, G-Drive had found their missing straight line speed down the 1.1km straight and with no negative effect around the rest of the lap. This puzzles us to this day, the speed difference to all the other chassis and team has remained the same, but the #26 in qualifying and #28 all weekend was faster than us. It shouldn't be possible but that's what we've got, unfortunately we can't find anything in the corners without changing aero spec and that is not allowed. We qualified only 4th after a dramatic qualifying but Nick and I were only ever battling for 3rd place behind the G-Drives. Luckily in the race rain brought us back in the game. The Ligier seems to struggle in the wet and straight line speed and aero balance become less critical. Nick got us into a healthy lead, and I picked up the battle with Canal in the #26 and handed over the car still in the lead albeit we were slightly out of sync with G-Drive. They also played the full course yellows well again, but Richard jumped in and quickly closed a 10 second gap to Rusinov and passed him to retake the lead once again. The two raced very close and eventually we were hit and the G-Drive gained damage. The full course yellow brought out to recover the debris, a plastic headlight cover from the Ligier, worked perfectly for them as we had just pitted and they came in to stop losing little time while we were under the 80km/h limit. Race for the win over, ok 2nd place it is, maybe next time...


What happened next in my view is the #28 sister G-Drive got very involved where it shouldn't have. First making contact with us while a lap down and giving us a puncture, then putting us out of the race for good with four minutes to go. Fast and recovering though they were, the driving from their side was overly-aggressive, a bit clumsy and ultimately dangerous. It wouldn't be tolerated in a junior championship. The fact it cost us the championship lead and the team who's car was involved gained a huge benefit from this, will be up to you to interpret. So we head to China 12 points behind and focused on winning the last two races, we certainly have the capability to do so, and as you'll understand are more fired up than ever. Racing isn't always fair, but racing should always be safe, and what I've seen here really p'ssed me off. The LMP1 and GTE classes were awesome to watch, Audi and Porsche were mm apart at many times but no contact, the same in GTE with Ferrari and Porsche. There was no need for what happened in LMP2 and the people involved just need to hold their hands up and admit fault, or at least change their ways for the rest of the season. Whether this will happen remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure, after all the high quality, on-the-limit and sporting competition of 2015 so far, that isn't a way I would want to win a championship, ever.