Well how can I put this nicely… our day sucked!
How did it start you ask? Well we got to the track (we were supposed to be there at 7:00am) and were actually about 15 minutes early. 6:45am and not a soul in sight. The guards were not even at their stations and we couldn’t figure out for the life of us what was going on. We thought that maybe on Sundays in Germany everyone sleeps in even a little longer. That’s right - you all guessed it - Daylight savings time! When you don’t understand a damn word that anyone speaks it is kind of hard to pick up that you need to change your clocks. When I get home I am going to just talk to anyone that will listen and understand.
Being the positive guy that I am I thought "how can this situation be used to our advantage?" We walked around the paddock area and looked in places we maybe shouldn’t have, only to be mistaken by some of the security guards as guys who were still up from the night before - they were giving us the international hand signal for drinking and the thumbs up. They thought that Liam and I had pulled an all nighter!
Then I thought that this gives Liam and extra hour to be ready for the race and he will be 1 hour more awake. By the way he hit the bed around 6:00pm last night and slept right through until 6:00am this morning, I think he is just a little tired. When the crew finally got the trailer opened up (another thing is that the crew sleeps in the trailer, a lot of the teams do this, they have bunk beds where the lounge would be in our trailers in North America) they all had a good laugh at our expense.
Liam got himself ready for the race and was really pumped as the skies were clear and the sun was starting to shine – of course it was - we were 1 hour later this morning. He was so pumped and excited for this one we all had a really good feeling (I am sure you can see where this is going). He got strapped in early like he likes to do when he is focused and off I headed for the outside of turn 2.
As I was going under the track I could hear all the cars pulling out onto the track so I hustled to the turn. They pull out and head for the front straight to line up and then they do another pace lap which I made to the turn in time to see. I was going to take a picture of Liam when he came by and I didn’t see him. I thought I must have missed him by looking through the camera. They finished the lap and stopped on the front straight for the standing start. I can hear the engines rev up and off they go so I figured, oh well, I will get a good shot of him this time by. Again I lost him now I am mad at myself I put the camera away and wait for the second lap. Oh - okay, the safety car is out I wonder what happened? The pack comes around and they are slow and no Liam, well I can be a little slow sometimes but I have been in this business a while now and I know how to look for a car and I know this time I didn’t miss him as he didn’t go by.
Then of course you think the worst – is he all right? I hustle my butt over to the trailer and nobody is there. I can’t get down to pit lane with the pass I had, so off to the VW tent/building where all the USA VW people were sitting and watching the race and the first thing out of their mouths is “what happened to Liam?” Great. I was counting on them. Then one of the girls said that he got crashed out on the pace lap by another car. Now I am mad - I am going to rip some punk kid apart for wrecking Liam when they come back to the paddock area. After waiting for what seemed to be hours and hours I finally see Liam and asked what happened.
In this series the drivers pull out on track and come to a stop and rev the car up and pull away spinning the rear tires while the engine is up on the rev limiter and then come to a stop again and repeat this process for a whole lap. I have always taught Liam to slow up before a corner and then accelerate through the corner to build up the heat in the tires like everyone here does. The thing this time is that the car two places up went through the corner hard and then came to a complete stop in the middle of the track. The car in front of Liam did the same thing and had to swerve to the side to avoid the stopped car and then came Liam - he wasn’t stopping. He tried to split the two cars only to find out that 4’ doesn’t find into a 3’ gap and peeled both front corners back into the sidepods. Not the finish (or start )that we wanted to have today. Needless to say he was extremely disappointed with himself and learned a lesson on pace laps and how easy it is to make a mistake on cold tires. The data showed 4 g’s when he hit the other cars.
I guess there is some saving grace in this whole situation - his team mate (that won yesterday) did basically the same thing . On the restart the pace car pulled off and the leader started to accelerate and then checked up and Marco slammed into the car in front of him, ending up with the rear of the car up on top of his shock cover. I think that took some of the sting out of Liam’s wound. Parc ferme (or impound) looked like a wrecking yard after the race. Only 12 of the 22 cars that started finished the race. This was out done only by the F3 race which was eventually red flagged after they took the second driver away in an ambulance as a result of the third big wreck of the race.
We had a good talk (and no I didn’t beat him) and nobody on the team was mad - they were very supportive. We hung out at the trailer for a while and then headed over to the VW tent where he had to explain it to about 100 people, which was a little hard for him but I think that it built character. We hung out there for what seemed like a century and watched the rest of the races on the TV’s in there. At 6:00pm VW had their end of the year party where they hand out awards for what seemed like almost everything. I had only one complaint about the party – we all know how boring award handouts can be, but try sitting through them when 70% of it is in German! Why is everyone clapping? What did they just say? Oh well, just clap along. They had a band and the signing was very interesting. They did a Grease medley sung in English with German accents – it was different to say the least. Liam and I finally ducked out of there around 10:00pm and are now back at the hotel.
For the third night in a row Liam has fallen asleep on top of his bed with his clothes on and in the dead body pose. I guess I will wake him up to tell him to go to bed properly – why do we do that?
Interesting fact for the day – I spent a lot of time with Marion, the owner of the team that Liam drove for this weekend. He is very influential in the racing community over here. He had invitations to all of the hospitality suites this weekend and he said that he was talking to the head of Audi who told him that they spent 2.3 million dollars on hospitality this weekend. They had one for the team, one for VIPS, one for the dealers and friends and one for media and none of them were small. I guess when you win Le Mans, The DTM championship, ALMS championship, LMS championship and everything else you can afford to do this.