Mark Howson was DSC’s Deputy Editor for just under a decade covering everything from British GT to the ILMS and the early years of the FIA World Endurance Championship.
In that time was as good a writer about the sportscar scene as you would find pretty much anywhere, but, as you’ll read below, has been away from the sport for some time.
Le Mans this year though saw him, to our, and probably his surprise take another look – and – as was always the case when Mark wrote for us regularly – his thoughts are well worth a read!
In an era when sportscar racing is attracting plenty of new fans, it’s genuinely exciting to hear that it is also bringing some of the old(er) guard back into the fold too!
Ed
One of those Facebook memories popped up on my feed last week. It was a picture of a media pass bearing my name being dangled in front of the camera and it was telling me that I haven’t been to La Sarthe for a decade.
Les Vingt Quatre Heures du Mans was such a huge part of my life for so long (my first visit being in 1989) that it seems ridiculous that it has only occasionally tugged on my consciousness in recent years. It was an annual cycle of planning, anticipation, immersion, endurance and recovery – and I was only going as a spectator back then! As soon as the dates were confirmed I would make sure my holiday-request form was submitted and I would start looking at ferries and accommodation options; and this cycle continued until I had the immense privilege of being invited to join the team and write for what would soon become this esteemed website in the early noughties.
My first working LM24 was 2004, when I was embedded with Team Nasamax for the week, and this was where my relationship with the race changed. No longer was I on the outside looking in, I was now on the inside looking, er, in.
That’s the strange thing about motorsport journalism – you rarely get the chance to just sit down and watch cars race. Now I was inside a largely soundproof media room above the pits with hundreds of other increasingly-sweaty media folk and snappers (I still can’t work out what most of them were there for, given the race’s low profile outside of the ‘bubble’), studying timing screens, bashing out reports and live updates and dashing to the pits for quotes from drivers and team managers; and, oh boy, did my imposter syndrome kick in when the instruction was something like, “Go find Wolfgang Ullrich or TK and find out what the problem is with the gearbox”!
There were many highs and many laughs, but the 2013 race was one of the toughest weekends of my life.
I’m glad I went back in 2014, as there was catharsis and it was a great race, but I realised that it was by then becoming just another (albeit big) event on a busy calendar and that perhaps it was time to be moving on.
Later that year Diane and I bought a village shop and post office in a pretty village in Leicestershire and that would consume our lives for the next nine years, meaning retirement from DSC was quickly necessary.
And it wasn’t long before I realised that I couldn’t watch motor racing anymore. No longer did I have access to the inside line from teams, drivers and officials; nor did I know anyone in the real (non-virtual) world who knew what sportscar racing was and so couldn’t just have a chat about a race or change in the regs while they bought their newspaper and a pint of milk.
I couldn’t even face reading social media posts from friends and colleagues as it felt so painful to no longer be in the ‘inner circle’.
I missed the people involved in the sport terribly, but just watching cars out on the circuit held little appeal. The last actual race I attended was in 2015 and I’ve watched barely a handful of laps on TV since.
I stopped reading this website on a regular basis but still met up with the guys a couple of times a year for a curry and a reminisce, so would get brief glimpses of the sportscar world.
But life has once again moved on. We left the shop last autumn and now have a much better work/life balance and even some spare time!
So when that memory popped up on FB, I thought, “Why not?” The first challenge was actually finding a way of watching.
We watch everything via apps nowadays so no longer have a TV package, meaning no Eurosport anymore. But a Twitter enquiry yielded a reply from Sarah Rigby (aka the world’s biggest Aston Martin nut) who advised me to sign up to Discovery+ for a month, which I did. Thanks Sarah.
It was now Thursday evening, but before watching anything on the app I noticed that YouTube was about to show the first Le Mans Cup race live so clicked on it…….and the first voice I heard was Mr Goodwin……and the second voice I heard was Martin Haven. Some things never change!
The race itself wasn’t a classic – support races at Le Mans rarely are, in my experience – but it was still great fun and I watched the whole thing; and I still can’t quite believe that that chap hopped out of his destroyed car unhurt after what was clearly a crash of immense violence. What a testament to modern safety standards.
But, oh my word, how many cars were racing this weekend?! 250-ish across the main event and supports? Where on earth did they put them all? Le Mans may be a pricier event nowadays but it would appear that value for money is not a valid concern for spectators.
The next (delayed) session was Hyperpole.
For this I needed Discovery+ and the ident on screen indicated that it was taking the Eurosport feed, which produced immediate anxiety – was he still there? [If you know, you know] But my fears were quickly allayed, and it soon became apparent that things had been much improved since the last time I attempted to watch the station’s LM24 coverage (which mainly involved me screaming at the telly at the nonsense being pedalled).
Hyperpole wasn’t a thing back in my day, so not only was I watching this for the first time but the realisation dawned that I knew very little about the regs, classes, teams, drivers, etc.
Oh well, a bit late now, so it was just a case of sitting back and enjoying. And enjoy it I did.
For starters, the Hypercars looked amazing; each possessing a unique identity and being serious, state of the art race cars while also harking back to their forebears, with shades of LMP1, GT1, DP and even Group C.
And I was blissfully unaware of any issues regarding BoP (wow, I’ve seen some unpleasant and clearly tribal fan comments since the race ended) which was lovely.
[I usually covered the lower classes at Le Mans and so I will always have a fondness for the likes of LMP2 and LMGT3. But that usually meant that I didn’t really have much idea of what was happening at the sharp end of the overall race, so forgive me if I focus on the Hypercar class here.]
You need to have faith in your product to give the session such a bold name, but it unfolded in dramatic fashion and I found myself punching the air as Kevin Estre snatched first place on the grid at the death (and my wife found herself rolling her eyes and wondering if it had been such a good idea to give me control of the remote for the weekend.)
If anyone remembers me of old it’s possible that they considered my reports to have been a bit verbose (I remember being asked to supply a 900-word Spa 24 race report to Autosport one year and noting with some horror that I’d already used up my allowance before I’d finished with qualifying), so I’ll spare you an in-depth review of the race and instead just make a few observations.
Previous commitments meant that I would be missing an hour of the Saturday evening coverage, but I watched the first four hours and was hugely impressed with the professionalism, the driving standards, and the astoundingly low rate of attrition.
Just getting 62 cars through the Dunlop chicane on the opening lap with not even a hint of tyre smoke was impressive enough, but for this to then continue for lap after lap after lap with racing of such high intensity was an indication that we were watching sportscar competition at the very highest levels.
A ‘Golden Era’? Yeah, I can go with that.
Watching from afar, the whole thing just felt…..solid. Race control had a firm grip on proceedings, the circuit looked fantastic and the teams and cars were ultra-professional; and the resources available for fans to follow and understand the race are just amazing.
Live timing is fabulous – far, far better than a decade ago – camera work is top-notch, and there are now three (at least) excellent English-language commentary teams.
Elsewhere you had the fan-favourite Radio Le Mans and the official feed (GG, Haven, David Addison, etc.), but on Eurosport we had excellent commentary from Alex Jacques, Ben Constanduros and Ben Edwards and superb technical coverage from Alex Brundle, Ollie Webb and Leena Gade, as well as regular visits from the likes of Tom Kristensen and Timo Bernhard. We are literally spoiled for choice.
Having missed an hour I returned to the coverage for the late evening and stayed until an hour into the first safety car, at which point I headed off to bed (my excuses are that I’m a lot older than I once was and that I had been in work from 7am, but the reality is that I have never stayed up for the whole 24 hours.)
I was back on the sofa at 6am expecting there to have been drama during the night, but I wasn’t expecting to discover that a large chunk of the time I’d spent in the land of nod had been occupied by the safety car once again.
[Incidentally, I was staggered by the revelation on Sunday morning that around 20,000 overtaking manoeuvres had already taken place during the race. Not a particularly meaningful statistic in itself, but it becomes much more significant when you factor in that pretty much any one of those had taken place at very high speed and required at least two drivers to be on the ball to avoid disaster]
The remaining nine hours played themselves out in gripping and unpredictable fashion, with the balance of power never looking to be in any team’s secure grasp.
With a couple of hours remaining, and with the two Ferraris under review by race control for a potential technical infringement and hints of mechanical issues for the Toyotas, I thought that things were looking good for Cadillac; but the verdict of an official reprimand (a what now?) for the 499Ps and a missing wiper blade (£13.99 from Halfords) for the #2 ended that prediction.
So goes this great race.
The uncertainty remained until the very last few seconds, with the threat for the leader of a spin or a tap from another car on the slippery surface never going away; and I found myself with very moist eyes as the #50 crossed the line and we witnessed the tsunami of emotion bursting forth from drivers and team.
What a race!
I enjoyed every second of the coverage of Le Mans and wish to convey my thanks and admiration to all involved in the race, in whatever capacity. [Never did work out what the Virtual Energy thingy was all about, though]
Would I go back? Hmmm……probably not. Too many people and too much discomfort.
Would I perhaps consider attending an FIA WEC race somewhere else in 2025? Oh yes!
MH
