Loss in Victory: The 2013 24 Hours of Le Mans
ooooIYKYK, ISSUE #0015
Tik, tik, tik, tik, tik. My DSLR chattered through a rapid succession of photos as I stood positioned just beyond that last curve of the Ford Chicane at Le Mans. An Audi RS 6 Avant with giant 'Medical Car' script written up the side and lights ablaze hammered through this slithering portion of the track, tagging the curbing and sending a wheel into the air.
I didn’t have to roll back the photos. I knew I got the shot. Nailed it.
“Nailed it,” yeah, that’s probably what I was thinking, caught up in my own conquest of nabbing a great photo of one of coolest of Audi race support cars. You never know when they’ll be on track or if you’ll be in the right place, have your camera up at the right time… and the race had barely begun. Awesome. It’s the RS 6 Medical Car!
Then…shit. It’s the RS 6 Medical Car! He was really moving. Part of me that wanted to think it was textbook. Those first few laps of the race, everyone is jockeying for position. Everyone is in tight quarters. Things happen. Metal gets bent. Carbon fiber shatters. People don’t die though. Right?
Death is something so many of us in racing may have nearly forgotten about. I’m not talking about the guys in the cars. I’m sure they’re always aware just how incredible the speed can be. However, you remember wrecks like Allan McNish’s spectacular end-over-end in 2011 or Anthony Davidson’s Toyota going airborn and hard into the barriers at Arnage the previous year. Those guys were still fine. They were still racing. While Allan’s wife Kelly McNish may tell you otherwise, fans and even those around racing with any regularity still put it out of their minds. It’s not like the old days.
In the 1930s, Hitler wrestled with the propaganda value of nationally-backed racing teams and drivers whose star power rivaled his own. And, this historic leader who most notoriously ruled out of fear learnt he had little if any hold over drivers who could meet their maker on any given race weekend. Those Silver Arrows designed by Ferdinand Porsche were mind-bogglingly fast for their time, yet their tire tech was just one step ahead of their safety tech… which is to say the cars actually had tires versus a complete lack of seatbelt, flame suit or helmet.
Things hadn’t changed much by the halcyon era when Ford took the Le Mans challenge to Ferrari. In that era, Enzo Ferrari was both national hero for his victories and pariah for just how many of his drivers went to their deaths at the wheel of his cars. Carroll Shelby rather famously won his class at Le Mans wearing farmer’s overalls, while the old Le Mans style start of running to one’s car that inspired Porsche to put the starter on the left also inspired drivers of the time to wait until they’d gotten to Mulsanne to take the time to try to buckle themselves in.
That was a different era. Deaths don’t really happen today. At least that’s what we probably all thought until Allan Simonsen rather tragically reminded us that racing, while immeasurably safer, is still a very dangerous sport. To teach this lesson, the Danish-born Aston Martin factory driver paid with his life following an accident at Tertre Rouge a fast right-hander of a bend next to an idyllic bar followed by an even more idyllic tree-lined run toward the Mulsanne straight. This was the same spot where Audi’s Mike Rockenfeller stuffed an R10 TDI just years before. Rocky fortunately walked away.
Of course, it would be hours before Simonsen’s fate was revealed – hours until that reality would settle in.
In some ways, a sense of loss is where this season began. Audi Sport ventured to Sebring for the annual 12-hour enduro. That particular year, they raced at Sebring knowing it no longer carried points in the chase for the World Endurance Championship title. They raced there to log hours in the cars. Mostly, they raced there because they wanted to bid one last goodbye to the race that had been such an important part of the marque’s LMP program from the very beginning.
They raced there, and they won. Marcel Fassler, Oliver Jarvis and Benoit Treluyer took first place, narrowly beating out Loic Duval, Allan McNish and Tom Kristensen who took second.
Minutes after he’d stepped down from the 2nd place box on the Sebring podium, I ran into Tom Kristensen behind the stands. While there was plenty of human din in the air by the podium, it was eerily quiet on the paddock side of the stands. The winningest driver ever at both Le Mans and Sebring was surprisingly choked up.
We chatted momentarily, I probably congratulated him. He’d narrowly missed the win. He was at a loss for words, but not because he’d lost the race. He admitted in a very real and unfiltered moment that what he’d really wanted for that evening was to dedicate the victory to his dad.
Tom had just recently lost his father over the off-season. In that loss, he’d not just said goodbye to his last surviving parent, he’d said goodbye to a friend and mentor in racing. In that moment, the always cool Mr. Le Mans was intensely human… and you could see he was also on a mission to pay his dad the ultimate respect through such a win.
He’d narrowly missed that opportunity at Sebring. Le Mans, however, was just a few months away.
Fast forward to a humid afternoon in the French countryside, and the Great Dane stood atop the winner’s podium in Le Mans. The race was as hard fought as it so often is, and Kristensen brought his Audi home victorious as he so often did.
The toll of this race though, in human life specifically, weighed heavily on everyone on that podium and even the thousands of fans amassed below. No doubt, the weight fell hardest amongst the countless number of Danes, both in the crowd and watching on their televisions at home.
Here he was with victory in hand… not just any victory, but his record-breaking ninth win here. His fans and his countrymen stood looking up to him literally from the tarmac below or figuratively so, through their glowing televisions or computer monitors. When the microphone was turned to him, Kristensen exuded the sense of class for which he is nearly as unmatched as he is in La Sarthe wins.
“This victory was for my dad. He gave me all of the motivation, determination and discipline for this sport… to do the best I can for the most wonderful team in the world... Audi Sport Team Joest. He can wait for the next victory of mine. This victory today I dedicate to Allan Simonsen, a great fellow Dane.”
Often when we look back on a race we consider the cars, the passes, the pit stops and the strategies. As a journalist, I might think of the experience, the stories witnessed, or of photographs grabbed amidst the highly eventful fervor of race week.
The 2013 24 Hours of Le Mans was different. The shock of what happened caused the very honest and human moments to stand out even more. It made vivid the loss, and it highlights the need to push for victory amidst that loss, that life goes on. It spoke to the spirit that rains down on this fabled circuit, flowing through the streets of Le Mans and through the veins of anyone who’s ever raced there or even attended. Le Mans is an ordeal like perhaps no other in modern sport, and in that the thrill of its victory may just be unmatched.
Though Audi is not a current competitor at Le Mans, the brand’s recurring theme of fortitude and perseverance means that while board decisions may take Audi out of Le Mans, no one can ever really truly take the spirit of Le Mans out of Audi.
This weekend is the 24 Hours of Le Mans. When this year’s victor rolls across the finish line, it’ll also be Father’s Day. So, as tribute to Tom Kristensen, his father, my father who himself passed not long ago and all the other fathers out there, this lesson of fortitude and perseverance seems both a fitting tribute to all of them, and a powerful example for all of us.
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A fine reminder of the humanity of motorsports, and that values such as Tom’s are universal.