According to a gentleman who knows about these things, there were more than £70m of cars on the grid for the Legends race on Saturday morning. Carlos Monteverde's achingly gorgeous 250LM alone probably accounted for a decent percentage of that estimated sum.
This could go very expensively wrong very quickly
Race morning was an early start and from 6am the weather was threatening. Was rain inevitable? We'd been so lucky on Thursday that I think we all assumed lady luck would smile - which meant the specks of rain which began falling as we headed down to the holding paddock were, in hindsight, bound to happen. We trundled down there on full-dry settings. My previous knowledge of the car in the wet was one lap at Blyton Park. It was pretty lethal.
But here we were, about to race on the full Le Mans track, in a car which Vernon, the man who lovingly prepares the machine, had done great things and given me a great balance of straight-line grunt and mid-corner grip. In the dry. We'd even found a little issue with the front brakes and fixed it.
Getting any kind of temperature into the tyres and brakes on the warm-up lap was difficult, but the middle pedal felt better. The rain was harder after Indianapolis and the beautiful Maserati 151 actually spun on the green flag lap on the left-hander. It then scrambled back to its spot at the front of the grid, which was precisely what we'd been told not to do in the drivers' briefing! We were placed 14th.
Powerful, slippery and very fast - in the dry
The pace car released pole sitter Al Buncombe in his Lister at barely 30mph, and the lights turned green as he drove under the gantry, all of us behind him attempted to respond as best we could, but the rain was now falling and grip was disappearing fast. I hooked up OK in first, but the car spooled up in second and left me a couple of car lengths behind another Lister and a D-Type Jaguar. Into the first right-hander the 250LM was wildly sideways and the first chicane was a right old mess with everyone wondering where the grip had gone.
We were running without a wiper and with industrial quantities of Rain-X on the plastic screen - at medium speed the water was a bit of a problem. Running fast it would clear nicely. Still, we managed to get by a Cobra under the Dunlop Bridge and after tippy-toeing around Essess I had a decent run on the Mulsanne Straight and passed a D-Type. The track was damp, but the rain appeared to be stopping, so now it was a case of hanging onto the back of the lead pack and seeing what we could do as the race progressed and the track dried.
Mille mate Buncombe set the pace in another Lister
I was behind a red Cobra that was going well and was very fast in a straight line. The circuit was damp at Mulsanne corner, but a decent run helped me past a Lotus 15 and then into Indianapolis and Arnage the pack closed up as the 250 LM appeared to have a problem. Smoke was pouring from the rear of the car, and I kept my distance - dropping it on someone else's oil isn't much fun. He pulled off at the Ford chicane, but cost me a bit of time - probably because I was too busy watching it and saying to myself "look, there's a 250 LM!"
Now it was a case of closing down the gap to the Cobra and the little Elva 160GT which was in the main pack. By Mulsanne corner I was with the Elva and passed it before Indianapolis, but he had me under brakes into the left-hander. The Lister has serious grunt, and it screamed passed again before the Porsche curves, only for the Elva to out-brake me again.
A great duel with the Elva lasted until the rain came
And the car? A dream for me. Much too powerful and stiff for the conditions, but beautifully balanced and always feeling like a proper racing machine. At 6,500rpm down the straights it was just screaming and making me grin. Fully sideways in many places it must have looked spectacular. I know I'm biased, but I just think it's the best looking car in that grid. To have your name on the door gives you immense pride. I would like to thank the owner for entrusting me with it. The race as won by Al Buncombe, my team-mate
on the Mille Miglia
. He proved his class again, he was unbeatable on the day - big congratulations to him.
I couldn't stay with him through the twisty section so resolved to wait for the fast stuff to have another go. After the first chicane I had a decent run, passed him cleanly and despite him trying the suicide route down the inside and me hand-waving some oversteer on the exit, we stayed ahead, the track was drying and we were closing on the Cobra and the pack.
Didn't stay dry for long, then it got interesting
All looked good, I was still learning the track, but... I had to take my mandatory pit-stop that lap, and after a stationary minute, the rain began to fall, quite a bit harder this time. Mr Elva put some manners on me straight out of the pits in the first chicane - always nice when between you there are four cars of both kinds in existence, his accounting for three of them - but in fairness, on a damp surface I just couldn't stay with him. Mid-engined traction is unbeatable.
So the second half of the race, as the rain fell and the track became more treacherous, was a mixture of self-preservation and an exploration of slip angles. If you'd told me that I'd ever have the chance to go fully sideways through the Porsche curves in this stunning one-off Lister, I'd have called you a liar. The Elva was moving away and I was now in eighth place and I just wanted to try and keep the car on the track.
Lister "a dream for me" according to Harris
I stayed to watch the start of the main 24-hour race with Vernon. When the safety car was deployed after 10 minutes because of a crash at Tetre Rouge we all thought it was just another shunt, that the driver would miraculously clamber out of the mangled bodyshell.
I love this sport, but it can be so cruel. My thoughts are with Allan Simonsen, those close to him, his team, the wider Le Mans community - and the VLN community too, who lost Wolf Silvester on the same day.