An occasional DSC series of interviews on some of the myriad stories that have emerged from the world’s greatest endurance race continues with this offering from 1998. Tim Sugden gives his recollections of an outstanding performance by the GTC-run EMKA McLaren F1 GTR crew, Sugden joined by Bill Auberlen and the late-lamented Steve O’Rourke.
Tell us a little about the 4th place finish overall at Le Mans in 1998? Between you and Bill. How many of the hours of the race did you do?
“People had talked to me a lot about Le Mans, throughout my Touring Car career, “Have you ever done Le Mans and, you live and work in a bubble I suppose, and at the time Touring Cars, particularly in the UK, was massive so I’d think to myself “stop banging on about Le Mans, blah blah blah!
“I’d never been to Le Mans and then when I start driving for Steve (O’Rourke) in ’97 in his Porsche GT2, we’d actually gone to Le Mans, that was part of the deal. We were going to do through British GT, a few FIA races and Le Mans.
“So, for me, it was great. I’m going to finally see what this thing’s all about. And I remember going to Le Mans in 1997 for the practice day with Steve, and when I got there, the atmosphere, watching Steve, after we’d driven from London, and his body language and his whole demeanour when he got there, he was just like a little kid, he was just so excited.
“I remember driving the first few laps at Le Mans and, of course, in those days there were no simulators or anything like that. So you arrived at a race completely unprepared.
“I don’t know if I’d managed to watch a bit of onboard video, but looking back there was nothing really, there were no references, there was nothing to find. So you didn’t really know the track at all.
“I remember that I went out and did a five-lap run and it was just like a blur. The track, at the time, I thought was difficult, the speed and I just didn’t know where I was going next!
“Nobody would ever arrive at Le Mans now like that. Everybody is prepared up to the eyeballs, but we just weren’t.
“And remember after five laps, I came into the pits and Steve said, still with that massive enthusiasm: “Did you enjoy it? And I remember that I said “Yeah, yeah. Thank you!” But in my head, I was thinking “****ing hell no, not at all!! But it did get better!!
“Unfortunately those days you had to qualify. I got my head around it and we did a lap time in the first hour and we were quick, my lap time in the first hour was second in class or something, and we were easily going to qualify. But then Win Percy was driving with us, and unfortunately, Win missed a gear, got the wrong gear, the Porsche had an H-pattern gearbox and blew the engine up and so we had to sit out the rest of the day.
“It was looking fine, it was still looking like we were easily going to qualify but I remember in that last hour, everybody started putting tyres on, the times were coming right down and, we missed out, we just got bumped with about 10 minutes to go we weren’t in the race.
“So I mention this only as a precursor to 1998, we did try to race in ’97 but didn’t make it.
“We did get into the race in 1998, but the grid that year, looking back, was staggering!”
It was indeed, full factory entries from Toyota, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Panoz, plus very strong privateer LMP entries featuring Courage and Ferrari machinery… Steve O’ Rourke would be the only gentleman driver to finish in the top 10.
“It was really hard because it was so many manufacturers and they each had two or three cars.
“I remember the poster, it had all the cars on it, I wish I had a copy, and never in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine a result like that!
“But the other thing that was interesting about the effort in 1998 was that it was Michael Cane’s GTC running the cars, although it was branded EMKA.”
And the second GTC car in 1998 was for Thomas Bscher with Pirro and Capello, the Audi ‘sighting mission’.
“Exactly, that was Audi having a look at it with their drivers, ready to come into to doing it in their own right.
“So we spent the week with Pirro and Dindo with Thomas, and Bill Auberlen came to the deal because BMW wanted to support us for the race.
“BMW’s support was in the form of an engine. They gave us a fresh engine for the race and the quid pro quo with that was that we had Bill who was obviously the BMW factory driver at the time.
“I remember meeting Bill and he was great, we all stayed at a Chateau in 1998, a place Steve had used when he’d raced at Le Mans years before I met him.
“It was an amazing old place, and Bill and I used to go for a run every morning and got to know each other.
“The plan was always that Steve wouldn’t drive much. But I think the original plan was that Steve was going to drive six hours, something like that.
“Steve started and did a short first stint and then got back in at about 6 pm, he went on to a double but very quickly in that stint was on the radio – “I’ve gone off, I’m OK and can bring it back in but I hit the wall, I just brushed it!”
“And then he came on again and said, “I’ve lost the mirror.”
“So the mirror on the right-hand side got wiped off down the tyre wall. And that’s actually all the damage it had done, it really neatly just wiped off the mirror on the right side. So when Steve pitted and put me in, I went out and didn’t have a mirror on the right side.
“There’s no centre mirror obviously in that car and there was no rear-view cameras in those days. So I just had one mirror on the left-hand side for the whole of the rest of the race basically which was incredibly stressful because you could never see anybody who wanted to come past on your right.
“Typically all the quick cars wanted to pass us on the right when they caught us, but you couldn’t see them coming. You had to just look in the mirror and see that somebody was nearly there and then you didn’t see when they were going to turn in, you weren’t sure if they were coming or not so you had to really wait, always give them a chance and the number of times that I turned into a corner and sort of closed my eyes almost because you weren’t sure where the guy was anymore. They didn’t know I didn’t have a mirror.
“So many times Bill and I said where you turned in hoping they hadn’t gone for a pass because you’d lost them in the mirror.
But we started to do well I remember Steve saying, probably recognising that there was real potential here, that he wasn’t going to go in for his second stint.
“He was never going to drive overnight anyway, in fact, he went back to the Chateau and had a full night’s sleep before getting back in at around 9 am.
That then meant that Bill and I were just doing doubles and triples into and through the night. It was pretty intense and we barely spoke to each other at all through that time – you were just into and out of the car.
“By the time Steve got back in, that was the first time Bill and I could step back, have a chat and see where we were, and by then we were up into 6th or 7th overall, pretty amazing in that company!
Through pace and consistency?
“We’d done that, in no small part, by having the least time in the pits than anybody, the car was bomb-proof.
“Our pace was good too, we weren’t the fastest out there by any means but the pace was good and we had no mistakes.
“But there were so many things in the middle of the night that could have gone wrong, it was a classic hard race, it was raining, it was drying out, but at Le Mans, it wasn’t predictable, you could find a spot that was still wet where everything around was bone dry.
“There were lots of occasions where we called it right, stayed out on slicks when others came in and changed, but it then stopped raining and we lost no time while others did. We called it right a lot of the time, and Michael Cane was a great Team Manager.
“We did have luck too, there was one occasion when it rained and I was out on slicks and he got on the radio and asked if I was going to pit, I said I was OK to stay out and I remember Michael radioing and saying “Are you sure, it’s raining quite a lot?”
I told him I was fine and went by the pits to start another lap. I just touched the brakes for the Dunlop Chicane and the car just snapped fully sideways. I was fully on the rack stops to catch it, and then fully on the rack stops the other way, somehow I didn’t spin!
“And I remember in the middle of all of this Michael coming on the radio and saying in his very well-spoken, very laid back way:
“Everything OK Tim?”
“No, I ****ing wasn’t OK!!”
“But then you got through those next couple of corners and onto the Mulsanne Straight and it was dry so I was able to get back and put wets on.
“So Bill and I had a few near misses but between us we managed to not touch anything, not to have any problems and not to have any mechanicals.
“And of course Steve came back and couldn’t believe where we were. So he said, I want to drive but I’ll just do one short stint, he did that and we went to the end! (In fact, Steve drove for around 3 hours of the 24!).”
The car came home in excellent fourth overall, behind a one-two for Porsche and with the all-Japanese-crewed Nissan R390 third, the McLaren holding off two further hard-charging Nissans to the flag.
Pics copyright John Brooks and Racingsportscar
