No horse named Morbid ever won this race

Dave Brabham is the youngest son of the three-time World Formula One champion, Jack, the tough-as-nails Aussie and the first and, so far, only driver to have won the championship in a car bearing his own name.

David, now 52, says that the most difficult thing about the Le Mans 24-hour race “Is when you are driving at night and it’s raining. You can't tell if the black patches on the road are dark tar or puddles of water.”

Toyota Gazoo Racing (starting no.8) in a Toyota TS050 Hybrid with Sebastien Buemi of Switzerland, Kazuki Nakajima of Japan and Fernando Alonso of Spain in action during the night of the race of Le Mans 24 Hours race in Le Mans, France, 16 June 2018. EPA-EFE/EDDY LEMAISTRE

He tells of being sideways in third gear in 2007, the year of his first class victory for Aston Martin, in streaming rain down the six kilometre Mulsanne straight.

“I just concentrated on my hands, they felt like old hands on the steering wheel, rather than trying to deal with everything around me, and that kept me focused.”

Now broken by two chicanes, cars still hit 330km/h on the straight, of what is still a public road when the race is not on. As South African motorsport legend Sarel van der Merwe, who competed in the event eight times with a best place finish of third on debut in 1984, wryly observes:

‘I don’t know why they bothered with those chicanes on the Mulsanne. You are just as dead at 330 as you would be at 400 km/h.”

This was the speed the faster runners used to top.

In 1986, Sarel’s team-mate F1 driver Jo Gartner was killed on the straight when the suspension in his Porsche broke, pitching the car over the guardrail. Van had only handed over to him the lap before.

A 24-hour spectacular from start to finish (Photo by Greg Mills)

David and Goliath struggles still persist, in relative terms, even at this top level. At this year’s 24-hour a small English manufacturer, Ginetta, made its debut, taking on the likes of Toyota, the world’s largest car producer, in the top LMP1 class with a brand new car developed in their Leeds factory.

Toyota Gazoo Racing (starting no.8) in a Toyota TS050 Hybrid with Sebastien Buemi of Switzerland, Kazuki Nakajima of Japan and Fernando Alonso of Spain in action during the Le Mans 24 Hours race in Le Mans, France, 17 June 2018. EPA-EFE/EDDY LEMAISTRE

The Ginetta G650 LMP1 (Photo by Greg Mills)

Complex beasties: The Ginetta LMP1 (Photo by Greg Mills)

Forty staff for even a modest LMP1 entry (Photo by Greg Mills)

Ginetta on the grid (Photo by Greg Mills)

And that’s without the onerous cost of superstar drivers. Mike Simpson, 34, is a local Yorkshire lad who races cars as a job for Ginetta.

“We know we are lacking grunt compared to the rest of the LMP1 field,” he said at the start of the race, “but we have good high-speed balance and aero. We just have to stay out of the pits.”

But it’s not easy for everyone. Simpson worked his way up the motor racing ladder the tough way, this, his first 24-Hour, a realisation of a lifetime dream.

Simpson was in good rookie company along with F1 drivers Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button and Juan-Pablo Montoya, the latter a winner of the Indy 500 as is Brazil’s Tony Kanaan, who was also running his first Le Mans.

Jan Lammers (Photo by Greg Mills)

Jody Scheckter, South Africa’s only F1 World Champion in 1979, retired the following season since “once you are on top, the only place is down”.

“Also,” he adds, “in that era, it was a game of Russian roulette. The more Grands Prix you did, the greater the chance you would have a serious, perhaps fatal accident.”

Racing cars then were notoriously dangerous, the circuits also lacking in today’s safety facilities. Drivers today have longer careers, should they choose to.

4000 staff run it, many of them volunteers, while 1200 journalists cover the event from bespoke facilities (Photo by Greg Mills)

This does of course not mean it’s got any easier, since technology has changed for everyone.

“The most difficult thing about Le Mans,” says Lammers, “remains to establish a rhythm, to know when to sit back and when to push.”

This is all important in a field which matches professionals with gifted amateurs in cars with as much as a 40km/h lap speed differential between the 60 entrants. And fitness is at a premium, with two-hour stints expected in the cars in the day, three at night.

Each team will go through at least 20 sets of these during the week. (Photo by Greg Mills)

12 tyres changes and a fuel stop every hour (Photo by Greg Mills)

But showing that there is, after all, room for sentimentality, Alonso came through, as if scripted, to win on debut, putting him in pole position in his ambition to become only the second person after Graham Hill to win motor racing’s Triple Crown: the Monaco GP, the Indy 500, and Le Mans. Only the Indy box now remains to be ticked; and a helluva tick that is too.

Totota winners of Le Mans 2018: Sebastian Buemi, Fernando Alonso and Kazuki Nakajima (Photo by ACO)

David Brabham has rekindled the eponymous family name in a range of new cars. Le Mans is on his bucket list. Will he personally add to his 18 attempts, and three class and one overall victories, perhaps tempted by appearing in the green and gold national colours his father made famous in motorsport? Avoiding the question, “I never really retired,” he responds. “I have tested the new car, the Brabham BT62, and found I was still quick, I still had it.”