Porsche Parade.  I had an invitation to come out to Charlotte, North Carolina, at the end of June for PCA’s Porsche Parade and caught a red eye from Los Angeles on Sunday night.  Monday was out at Lowes Motor Speedway, working a corporate event for Synergy Racing and Bank of America with a great group of passionate fellow Porsche owners.  It was just a great day of fun out on the track.  On Tuesday I was scheduled for an afternoon talk on safety versus performance at the Heritage and Historic Display.  The first thing I noticed was the huge collection of amazing cars.  It was a challenge to stay focused on my job at hand—I was tempted to just walk around and check out the incredible collection of Porsches.  Quickly I realized that there was quite a turnout of fellow enthusiasts and I had to get my head in the game.  The one hour discussion and Q & A session was epic to say the least and turned into a terrific afternoon of give and take with fellow PCA members.

On the way to Lime Rock.  We’re preparing for the ALMS race at Lime Rock now and you’ve sent some questions about the track and driver preparation for the race.   I thought I’d devote this blog entry to answering those questions.

Q:  Are you looking forward to the new track layout and surface at Lime Rock?

A:  From the looks of the photos and the plans for the new layout at Lime Rock, it’s definitely going to be a different racetrack.  The original Lime Rock configuration was one of my favorites, but for less obvious reasons.  The high-speed, multi-surface flow and all the heritage that the track exuded was a lot of fun and certainly one of the most challenging tracks I’ve been to since joining the ALMS in 2003.  In saying that, safety and passing zones weren’t in abundance, and I think that was Skip Barber’s plan when deciding to update the new circuit.  It’s new for everyone and excited to get out there Friday morning. 

Q:  What is it like driving the GT car versus the LMP2 car in the rain?  What do you do to say cool on hot sunny days?

A:  First and foremost, in a prototype you quickly realize that in the rain you no longer have a roof over your head or a windshield.  You’re now in the natural elements.  The biggest thing is that the LMP2 car sits a lot lower to the ground and has a lot more aerodynamics from underneath, so in the standing water, whenever there is an extreme amount of water, the LMP2 car is a lot more adversely affected and has a tendency to aquaplane, which gets very interesting.  But in saying that, in the high speed corners the downforce of the car means that you’re still carrying as much or more speed through the corner in the wet as you would in the dry with a GT car.  That helps put into perspective just how much grip is created by the aerodynamics of the prototypes.
As for staying cool, in the GT car, recently the technology has been based around the cool suit and the liquid cooling of the driver with the shirt cooling the core temperature of the body.  What we’ve been working on lately is cooling the driver, both the helmet and the body, with forced chilled air.  This eliminates weight and also solves the problem of the water from the cool shirt becoming warm.  We do it from fresh air or cooled air and have the same system cooling the helmet and the body and with that we can save weight and gain efficiency.  That’s what we’re really focused on developing these days.

Q:  Is that technology for both the LMP2 car and the GT car?

A:  That’s for the GT car.  For the LMP2 car, heat isn’t really a factor unless you’re stationary in the pits during practice, qualifying and when you’re doing set up and such.  When you’re moving, there’s such a high flow of air that it really helps a lot.  One interesting thing about driving an open-top prototype is the aerodynamics of the driver’s helmet itself.  It’s amazing just how small an opening or external aerodynamic piece on the helmet can make a large difference at high speed in terms of the stability of the car as a whole. 

The helmet has three forces of nature you’re always fighting—the first is having an application of cooling come through the vents, and the second two are aerodynamic.  There’s lift that can be generated, where the helmet feels like it’s being pulled off your head, and there’s buffeting, where the head will shake at a high frequency.  So, we’ve worked hard to develop pieces for the helmet that give the downforce and stability in the car while maintaining the highest level of protection for the driver, and not upsetting the overall aerodynamics of the car.  All of this really comes into play with high-downforce cars like the prototypes, and has to do with airflow to the rear wing when you’re above 150mph or so.

Send your comments and questions to Patrick at askpatrick@pca.org.  Although he can’t respond individually, he’ll get to as many as possible in his blog.

Le Mans.  Le Mans was tough.  I think it was the greatest example of the highs and lows of motorsport.  I knew what to expect after having four consecutive finishes with two of those being wins and another one being a podium, so it was a hard one to accept the final results this year.  In hind sight, though, the whole month was just an excellent experience.  It was really exciting to be back again with the IMSA guys for a second year, knowing everybody that much better.  It went pretty smoothly and to lead the charge and put in that pole position lap and the lap record was really sweet.  Being able to let that soak in during the Friday break before the race started on Saturday afternoon was different from most races where you go from qualifying straight into the race. It was great.

Pole lap.  It is a challenge at Le Mans when you go for the one perfect lap because the tire has an optimum performance that’s only there for a small window.  Usually it is the first timed lap so you go out kind of cold turkey and try to lay down a perfect lap on one of the longest tracks there is.  And you have to do it at such a high rate of speed that there’s a tremendous amount of risk not only in overdriving the lap, or making a mistake that could harm your lap time at minimum, but also hurt the car for the race—so it’s a very tricky balance.  The irony of it was that we weren’t really planning on chasing the pole.  Our main objective was getting our car set up for the race and that went so smoothly that we were ahead of schedule, enjoying ourselves at dinner break on the final evening of qualifying. In a little bit of jest but in some competitive spirit we all looked at each other and one of the team bosses, Franck Rava ( who co-runs the team with Raymond Narac, the third driver on the team) looked at me and said, “What do you think about going out there and putting in a lap that would be under four minutes?”  And I said that I could promise one thing…I’d give it my best shot.  Little did I know that we’d go almost two seconds under four minutes, but it was such a sweet feeling to do that.  Usually qualifying is primarily a matter of preparation for the race and that’s how I’ve always seen it.  But there’s something that’s extra special about Le Mans and I just thoroughly enjoyed the quest for the pole with it being over four laps and such varying track and weather conditions.  It’s a science to time it well with only a limited number of tires.  We only had two sets for the whole eight hours that we could really go for qualifying on.  So when you get that one lap, there is sure a lot of energy that goes into it and there are sure a lot of eyes on the screen when you do go out for that lap.  But I’ll tell you, when it goes well, like it did right before the dinner break on Wednesday when we knocked Jörg off the pole, and then again with Wolf on the second night, it was sure a wild eerie feeling—just pounding the steering wheel with excitement when we passed the start-finish line and the crew barely able relate the information to you they’re so happy.  It was extra sweet. 

The start.  Sitting on that success, knowing that it’s a 24 hour race and that pole position doesn’t really mean a lot, was fun but our real focus was on the race and certainly we were confident, but things were difficult even before the race started.
We were pushed to the back for what I understood to be an illegal fueling procedure.  The team had added some fuel to the car on the false grid before we went out for the reconnaissance lap and the ACO rules deem that illegal as a safety measure.  So they basically put us to the back of the pack for the violation of that.  I thought that was harsh for the infraction but I understand that safety is their first concern, which is something I had to accept and really put straight out of my mind.  I didn’t know until I came around on my two reconnaissance laps and had lined up to go onto the grid that they had demoted me to the back.  But I knew that I had to get that straight out of my mind, realize that it was a very small part of the big picture and that the main objective was to get through the start as clean as possible. 

There are a couple of elements to the start of the 24 hours of Le Mans. Qualifying up front, besides bragging rights, is really about staying out of trouble and the further you are up on the grid, the less danger you have of cars with problems ahead of you or less experienced drivers affecting you.  But also there’s the need to get through that traffic, after I knew I was going to start last, so that I could get up into the clean air with the top three runners.  In the beginning of the race, you have no traffic, because everybody is running on clear track.  You don’t have the classes running amongst each other.  So it’s really about pushing hard in that first hour because that’s the only time you have clear track to put in really quick laps and to really establish where you settle into your first quarter of the race.  So first and foremost it was all about getting through cleanly and protecting the car, but once we got stretched out after the first lap, I just started working at picking off competitors one by one, getting firmly up into the top three as quickly as possible and did my best to keep within striking distance. 

Our game plan from the beginning was to alternate Richard Lietz, also a Porsche factory driver, and myself for the first portion of the race to keep an all pro lineup in the car to stay in competition with the all pro lineups of our opposition.  That was a tremendously generous team maneuver from Raymond, to decide to let the young boys run in the beginning and try to establish a bit of a gap from cars that might be hanging onto our coattails. In saying that, Raymond is completely capable and I think it was very much a team playing gesture on his part.  I knew he wanted to drive and certainly he holds his own as a driver of only four years of pro level competition.  His lap times speak for themselves and he is very steady and extremely fit. 

The accident.  So when I got back in the car for my second stint, starting the third hour of competition, I was just on my out lap when things went wrong.  With tire warmers allowed at the 24 hours of Le Mans, when the car gets dropped off the jacks you are at racing speed when you come out of the pits, there’s no really working up to it.  So it was just straight back into it and I came up on two cars fighting for position about halfway through my first lap, going down into Indianapolis.  I came up on them quite quickly because they had been jostling for position and I was letting them sort their differences out. I was following the Flying Lizard car and he was accelerating past the Ferrari and I decided to go in his lane and tag along behind him.  Just as I  peeked past the Ferrari who was on my right, the Porsche ahead of me was hard, hard, hard on the brakes.  It caught me completely by surprise because that’s not a section of race track where I do any braking.  Out of complete surprise and with that much speed, I jerked to the right to avoid running into the back of him while sliding in front of the Ferrari, but at that high rate of speed and with that much steering input, it sent my car sideways and in doing so, on the correction I sideswiped into the side of the #80 car, purely trying to avoid him.  He didn’t see me and continued to begin his turn into the right-hander.  We brushed wheel to wheel and went into the gravel and unfortunately because of the high rate of speed, the car suffered a damaged front suspension that didn’t allow me to even get the car back to the pit lane. 

The aftermath.  It was a tremendous, tremendous negative experience.  I had never failed to bring a race car back to the pits in my whole career with Porsche.  I can’t think of any other time I’ve ever experienced that other than a time when the whole wheel assembly fell off of my car at Mosport in 2005 and at that point we had won the race because it was the last lap and we were actually a lap up on the rest of the field.  To be standing on the side of the track while the rest of the cars are going around—I’ve never had that feeling and it’s just completely empty.  I was basically just in shock.  I didn’t have a lot of emotion other than being extremely surprised and just heartbroken.  I couldn’t stop thinking about the team, how much time and money and preparation they had put into the car. To go out that early was such a tough one.  In saying all that, I knew that’s what makes Le Mans the race it is.  Not just the high of all the preparation and being on pole but also the possibility of having the race track swallow you up.  That’s what makes that place so challenging.  The speeds are so high.  I I truly believe that such misunderstandings happen race by race but at much lower speeds and so it really takes just a small lift or a little bit of a steering input.  At 200 mph, it’s so different.  To put it into perspective, it’s a little bit like watching Talladega with a sprint cup competitor where just a little bit of a correction or avoidance turns into something so big.  And that’s exactly what it was.  It was a tough one.

Ask Patrick:

Q:  When you were moved to the back of the grid at Le Mans, how do you take bad news like that and set it completely aside?

A: I believe in sport psychology and something that you are taught in sport psychology whether you’re a hockey goalkeeper or a golfer on the PGA tour or a football player, you only have one thing that’s in your control and that’s getting the very best out of yourself on race day or game day.  There are so many factors out there that can affect your outcome or result.  And so you cannot be affected by the end result.  You can only be affected by your personal performance on that day.  And so I try to take that philosophy into my racing and it allows me to focus on what I do, which is to try to drive as fast as I can behind the wheel. There are days when the refueling procedure gets you sent to the back or that just trying to avoid two other cars that are in a battle sends you off the track into the gravel trap and the day is over.  There are so many things that can happen like that that are outside of your control.  But I’ve tried to learn not to waste mental energy on what I can’t change.   And that was a huge thing this year at Le Mans.  An extreme high and an extreme low.  How qualifying and preparation seemed to be going so well and then the most extreme result that we could have imagined which would be being out of the race just two hours in.

Send your comments and questions to Patrick at askpatrick@pca.org.  Although he can’t respond individually, he’ll get to as many as possible in his blog.

Le Mans.  I’m driving with the IMSA Performance Matmut team in their 911 GT3 RSR.  They’ve become a real powerhouse team in the European Le Mans Series. We’re the defending champions of the class so it’s great to be back for a second year in a row with these guys.  Our bond has really grown and they’ve excelled so much as a team in the last 24 months.  I’m looking forward to moving forward with them.  We ran the Spa 24-Hour after the Le Mans win last year and we finished a close second there, so this will be my third 24 hour race with them within 12 months.  It is a completely different environment, culturally, driving for an all-French team that’s based not far from Le Mans, close to Normandy, at Rouen.  They are a 100 percent professional/family organization.  Raymond Narac is one of the principals of the team and also a driver.  Then there is Richard Lietz, with whom I drove last year as well, a new factory driver from Austria.  This is his second year as a factory driver.  So Raymond, Richard and I will be the driving contingent.  Culturally, like I said, it’s a much different world driving for a French team but it’s also great and enlightening because they do things, not better or worse, but different.

There is the language barrier, of course.  It keeps my French tip-top and it’s great to be over there the whole month and to be immersed again in the Le Mans culture where I lived in 1999.  Every June from 2004 on has been that way.  So I get stuck right back in there and have the privilege of having a role in the team, not only as a driver.  I share my game knowledge of strategy and engineering with the team who have very open ears to me and my experience, knowing that I’ve been at Le Mans a little bit longer than they have—but not by much.  So I take on a more extended role than I would do in an LMP2 situation.  That’s a great feeling and a little of extra responsibility but very rewarding when the outcome is as it was last year.  The other factor is that working for a French team at Le Mans adds a little bit of an extra home court advantage.  The fans are behind us as a French team and they are very interested in what we are doing. The local media is very interested in us and who we are.  Going up against the huge contingent of Ferraris this year, most of them from other countries, we really carry a home team flag and for an American to do that with a French organization at a French race is a special feeling.

Go Speed Racer.  Speed Racer is obviously a special movie for 2008 and it has a great Le Mans flavor behind it.  Men’s Health magazine had the idea to put Matthew Fox, who plays Racer X in the movie, on their cover for a recent issue.  They wanted to do a story that was a bit more individual and creative and they wanted to say, “OK, Mr. Fox, we see that you can drive a car on a green screen, but can you drive a real race car?”  And his answer was “I have no experience driving on a race track or in a race car, but I’d love to have a go.”

And that’s where I was fortunate to be involved, as his pro for the day, if you will.  It was a bit more than instructing, it was the two of us out on the track for a day with two brand new 911s, a 911 Turbo and a GT3, on the Streets of Willow, which I think, is one of the most underrated race tracks in the country.  It was just an ultimate experience and a great opportunity for him to have a driver, two cars and a racetrack all to himself. For me it was neat to work with a guy who is so accomplished in his own right, but very down to earth, in good shape, methodical, and a perfect student.  And for a guy that’s as successful and has such celebrity as he does, that says a lot about who he is.  We really had a good time and we’ve stayed in touch since then.  To be in a publication like Men’s Health, of course,was a great opportunity for me. 

Ask Patrick
Q:  There’s a long gap to the next ALMS race at Lime Rock in the middle of July.  Do you lose the rhythm during the down time?

A:  Actually, it’s a normal June Le Mans break and I’m used to that with the ALMS.  From the RS Spyder standpoint, we’ll be out testing and the Penske guys are never ever on vacation.  There’s no rest.  I’m in regular contact with my engineers and my team managers and we’re working behind the scenes to better ourselves every single time we hit the track.  I’ll be in the car in June for a couple of days of testing and we’re already hard at work on pushing forward.  It’s a process of constant improvement.  That’s really how championships are won.  It’s super to have all those resources and to know I’ve got the best team behind me.  We’ll be working intermittently between racing at Le Mans on Lime Rock and we’ll hit the ground running at Lime Rock and just continue our drive toward a championship.

Send your comments and questions to Patrick at askpatrick@pca.org.  Although he can’t respond individually, he’ll get to as many as possible in his blog.