CHARLES LACARRE
Charles La carre
Field report: Lamera Cup preseason at Le Mans
Early morning, Le Mans awakes. I am waking up too. A morning with a maddening wind. My brain is as cloudy as the sky.
Out of bed in Diesel mode, I am struggling to open both my eyes at the same time, and setting up my GoPro turns out to be tougher than I expected. Hard times you know…
Rain is falling outside. As if I forgot I would spend the day at the race track.
Le Mans and rain… what a long and tumultuous love story à la “I love you, me neither”… Truly, an inseparable duo… Just like firemen and the color red!
When I was told earlier in the year that I would join the French program of Team Scorpus Racing in 2018, many emotions went through my mind.
Serenity and Joy were the first to knock at my limbic system: 2018 was on the right track. Thanks to Alain Veyssière’s work, I will be able to have a concrete schedule of races included in an engaging project in which I will be able to contribute. A big psychological relief.
Then came anxiety and the time to worry !
Big sweat drips ran through my back when I realized Scorpus Racing 18 would be running in an endurance championship called Lamera Cup. This means I will be encountering right turns all season long.
Even to this day, I still have to face that hard truth.
Everybody sets his own goals.
To satisfy the oval racer that I am, I tell myself that the Lamera car has many similarities with my beloved American championship, starting with the engine: 350hp, Ford engine! Built tough is what they say!
A little bit of America under the hood, with all due respect to our dear Henry, who understood well that motorsports was born a few minutes after the second car out of his workshop!
To finish it off, joy and anxiety made way for pride.
Proud to join a formidable program. Proud to get the opportunity to represent all year long the values of one of the most respectable profession: the firefighters.
Facts are here: #18 is stamped on a scarlet red body work…
No, my favorite ketchup brand did not magically decide to become my main sponsor this year. Sadly…
But! As 18 matches the French equivalent of America’s 911, all the teammates who will discover the car with me this morning at the Bugatti racetrack of Le Mans share a common job: they fight the flames during the week, before putting their fireproof racing suits on the week-end!
Mark, Tony, Anto, Nico and Matt will share the cockpit with me this year, for 7 endurance race week-ends in France, Portugal and the country of chocolate, bear and fries… with events ranging from 8 to 24 hours of non-stop racing!
Stef, Robin, Nico 2 and Nico 3 will surround us logistically and mechanically whenever a screw needs to be screwed… Under Alain Veyssière’s directives!
The change of scenery when I first climb into the car is completely disorienting. Accustomed to the raw look of American stock-cars dashboards and few gauges, my horizon is now filled with digital screens, brightness, and switches and buttons all over the place. I was even allowed the luxury of having a rear camera in case I would like to park in reverse… Who knows!
A true plane cockpit and to top it all off… No gear shifter…
WHAT??????
Yeah… I will have to deal with paddle shifters and a sequential gearbox… I struggled to process this information in my brain, as the car owner noticed after climbing in the passenger seat for a lap that I was trying to grab the shift… My hand only encountered void and emptiness flooded my heart… I swear I could see him laughing at me under his helmet!
I am ready for this challenge.
It is stimulating in many ways. Being a complete race car drivers require to master the different types of cars and track profiles…
I will be out of my comfort zone and this comforts me in my decision to stick with my objective.
The car is different, the tracks are different, but the goal remains the same!
After working on oval tracks, close racing and 20 minutes heat races last year, I will be able to work on my endurance skills, mandatory abilities in the United-States, where races often reach stints lengths endurance drivers are used to. Optimal long-distance focus and resistance are key words to Duracell marketing campaigns… And now, they will be the magic words of my season!
I will learn a new way to drive, a completely different approach of racing which fits perfectly with my project of racing in America, in NASCAR while allowing me to share proudly the firefighters’ values on and off the track!
Team work, respect of others, self-sacrifice… Here are the obvious ones…
More subtle, but still extremely important: Hard work, dedication, self-respect, respect towards our own identity, respect towards our car, our tools, with an almost military strictness.
I’m looking forward to start racing! First step: Discover the car today, during this testing session at Le Mans.
Nevermind… I was forced to say to the God of Race: Not today…
My excitement and desire to drive quickly vanished, destroyed by the God of Racing himself… He reduced today’s summary to : A lap and half before an electronic sensor decided it was time to get barbecued… Call the firefighter!!! Fire under the hood!!!!
It could have been worse for sure… As one of my teammate pointed out with wit: my sole lap around the track was enough to earn me the status of “most experienced driver of the team”…
“The lap” definitely felt too short, but still, a good feedback rich of first impressions! A driving position rather low, surprising and almost laid down. I almost forgot the size of the car. It is wider than it seems once on the track… And pretty heavy. No need to be shy on the brakes… Left-foot braking at its finest, I will not hesitate to be incisive when stomping the brakes!
The direction feels heavy too and amplified by the position close to the wheel, but the comfort brought by the sequential shifting compensates surprisingly well for it. Unfortunately, no heel-and-toeing, no arm movement to get up through the gears… The attention is only focused on vision. That is one huge priority that I hope to be able to talk about in an article soon on the blog NASC’ART. Sight is often underrated… It requires trusting the car blindly along with the eyes ability to estimate the right direction and the optimal racing line. The less your brain works on the actual shape of your racing line, the more natural and faster it is… A counter-intuitive state of near-unconsciousness where you force yourself not to look at where you brain wants you to look to be reassured. Racing is not about being comfortable and automatic driving is hugely destabilizing but extremely effective and it allows you to focus on other important things like strategy, the other cars surrounding you or even spotting Waldo in the grandstands at Turn 3…
That is of course, my humble point of view on the matter!
An unexpected issue to re-program a new electronic sensor on the car would eventually shake our schedule up and cancel the rest of the day…
Even when you concentrate on doing your best, the beauty of motorsports resides in the unknown. Fate, luck and karma will always be involved…
I am convinced karma will come back on our side. And my crystal ball tells me it will be back in 15 days, on March 30th. The first race of the championship will take place at Magny-Cours. The date is set!
The 6 drivers of the team will only have 2hours and 30minutes of free practice before qualifying and the big main event: A 15 hours race… Thrown in the deep end amongst the sharks of the pack!