Rollcentre at Le Mans - The Race

Dashed Deams / What A Week

For Rollcentre Racing the world’s greatest race started strongly, built solidly for over 15 hours, but ended savagely against the wall in the Porsche Curves, in an incident Martin Short was helpless to prevent.

Who could possibly blame Shorty for wanting to get involved with this race? The atmosphere before the 24 Hours is like nothing else and Rollcentre has looked every bit the established team her: it is easy to forget this is their first attempt at the world’s greatest race.

Bright sunshine and slightly cooler temperatures than the previous couples of days greeted starting driver Joao Barbosa, ninth on the grid.

The 48 car field thundered past the pits to commence the race action and the (less than) four minutes it took the cars to come around again seemed to fly by too. After a couple of laps of jostling, Barbosa retained his ninth place, with the target ahead being the Dome of Tom Coronel, Ayari dropping back behind in the Pescarolo.

Early pitstops for some saw a charging Barbosa move up to sixth, and homing in on the tail of the Zytek - fancied by many to be the main challenger to Audi’s Le Mans domination. Rollcentre was keen to stamp its own mark on the race from an early stage: it was good to see that the dallara had better fuel economy than some of the main rivals.

Joao came in for his first fuel stop at exactly the same time as the Zytek. Excellent work by the crew put a double-stinting Barbosa back onto the track ahead.

Joao arguably had the most work to do of the three Rollcentre X-Markets drivers - the opening stint being more frantic than later on as the field gradually becomes more spread out. Around the one hour, mark there was a five car scrap from fourth to eighth, the Portuguese right in the thick of it, “focusing on the race and trying to avoid trouble… but I had heavy understeer in the fast corners, especially on my second stint and it was hard to keep pushing.” A place was conceded to Sebastian Bourdais - an individual who would eventually be responsible for Rollcentre’s undeserved early exit.

After 80 minutes a “nervous as hell” Rob Barff began his double stint. The second and third placed Audis (McNish and Lehto) were lapping at sprint pace, but found themselves on the wrong bit of track at the wrong time, slithering off on oil at the Porsche Curves and ending up embedded in the barrier. It was incredible enough to see the less damaged Champion car return to the pits, but to see what was left of Allan McNish’s wreckage limp back sideways was astonishing. Once the Audis had returned to the pits there was much work to do, and Rob was accordingly promoted to fifth. “I was taking it fairly easy because I could see the Dome and Pescarolo fighting ahead of me and hoped to pick up a place or both if they made mistakes.”

Martin Short considered events so far to be “pretty remarkable, it is all going smoothly and we are running at a reasonable pace. In fact I’m worried I’m a bit too relaxed about the whole thing!”

Relaxation changed to frustration soon enough when Martin took the helm and realised just how bad the understeer was. “It is criminal, really poor. I can’t drive an understeering car and the way I drive is just making it even worse. Rob and Joao are so talented and can drive around the problem, but I can’t change my style. I’m really disappointed because we have worked so hard to get the front end working. We’ll have to fit some gurneys at the next pitstop,” he explained later

He was back in the pits sooner than expected though, when his second stint was cut short. A left rear puncture picked up at 200mph, “which was an exciting new experience” and meant creeping round back to the pits so as not to damage the bodywork with flailing rubber. Martin seemed to get the balance of haste and care just right, slithering to a halt with only three contact patches biting into the concrete.

But he was obviously in some discomfort when he got out of the car: “The lap strap didn’t go in when I got in the car so I had to drive the first stint not strapped in properly and had to brace myself with my left shoulder.” Fortunately two chiropractors - Vicky and Mark Horrell - were on hand to put Martin together again.

Joao was by this point running a solid fifth and trying to chase down the Dome and the Pescarolo ahead - the two lead Audis were in a different league on pace, as expected. The Bourdais Pescarolo had suffered glitches earlier in the race and was back in seventh. Bourdais was only being pesky at this point: several laps down but on a charge, he was pressuring Joao to let him pass so he could unlap himself.

Some hours later at 7:15am Bourdais would go from pesky to downright dangerous - driving straight into the back of Short, with no attempt to get alongside or pass. It looks from all the replays (and there have been plenty) as though Bourdais simply punted him off. “I was blaming myself at the time, but now I have seen the replay I know it had nothing to do with me. He said he was trying to unlap himself for two laps but the truth is he was only behind me for quarter of a lap and I was going to let him through further round that lap.” The fact is that Bourdais was seven laps down on Short at the time and had a quicker car behind him. It just didn’t look like a racing incident, particularly as the car ahead of them was in the last podium position, and it was Pescarolo’s other car…

Between the two incidents with Bourdais’ Pescarolo all of the drivers had some inspired stints - Barff doing a quadruple stint and beating Joao’s best time with a 3:41.347 as the night air cooled and Joao then going on to crack a low 3:39, which led to a cheer in the media room - plenty of people had their eyes on this car now. Fifth became fourth as the drivers got into their rhythm and the crew responded by raising their game too - switching front and rear bodywork panels on the car in under a minute to get more downforce on the front, and to get the rear lights working.

And so back to 7:20am. The impact from Bourdais’ (at best) recklessly driven car had caused damage to the left rear suspension of the Dallara, damage that an inspection in the pits had not revealed….

Just a few laps later, Martin pressed on through the Porsche Curves, but the left rear suspension collapsed, pitching the Dallara into the wall with massive force, the wreckage spinning, flying and slewing to a sickening halt. The Rollcentre Racing Le Mans dream was snuffed out in an instant - for 2004 at least.

Martin climbed out of the car but was clearly badly shaken and had hurt his legs. It was two hours later before he appeared in the pitlane, with a walking stick to assist his passage to the Pescarolo pit. It may be a while until he thinks of it this way but he was a lucky man - the wishbone had punched through the tub and cut and bruised Martin’s right leg. He also suffered tissue damage to his pelvis, which was no surprise bearing in mind the violence of the impact. Thank goodness he will be on the mend soon.

The emotions involved with the retirement in this fashion were clear to see. Just thinking about how hard this small privateer team has worked and how far they had come and just how promising it was looking for a strong Rollcentre finish …. The tears in the Rollcentre garage were certainly justified.

To Martin Short, the Dallara Judd and the whole Rollcentre team – get some rest and get well soon. It was a fantastic effort, but Le Mans can be such a cruel venue.
Paul Slinger