Time For Tea? Derek Bell laps Le Mans

Onboard with Derek Bell to kick start the 24-hour fever and build excitement for Le Mans 2013

OK, there's been quite a big Porsche presence on PH recently. Indulge us in this one though, this being a combination of two of our favourite things. Three really, if you include the driver for this onboard slice of La Sarthe. We have Derek Bell, we have a Porsche 962 and we have a qualifying lap for last year's Le Mans Group C race, held just before the main event in June. What more needs to be said than that?

It doesn't give you much this video - it's just a camera strapped to the dashboard and given a slightly ethereal effect by YouTube's anti wobble witchcraft. But as any film director will tell you, it's as much what you don't show as what you do that makes for thrilling footage. You can't see Bell or his inputs into the car but you can just tell by the sounds that the 962 isn't like a modern racing car. There's no flappy-paddle automation here, just a physical-sounding monster of a car devouring the track it was built for and making even a driver of Bell's ability work for it too. Throttle applications are measured and at times cautious. Gear changes deliberate and well thought out. All because they have to be. But by heck when he does let it off the leash does it go some.

You can read more about Bell from when Riggers met him a little while back and we even POTW'd this car not long after. Top Gear's Piers Ward had a go with this very car last year and his impressions can be seen here, Chris Harris's view from the wheel of another 962 here. But here's the man himself, letting rip with 'his' 962 down the Mulsanne Straight. Enjoy.