Farewell to a golden era, part two
Fifteen years ago, a privateer with little international pedigree led Le Mans in this Dallara. Time to dust it down and blow off the cobwebs at Silverstone
Martin Short gets back behind the wheel of his Le Mans-leading Dallara
“Either the radio didn’t work or the guys didn’t tell me in case I did something stupid” MARTIN SHORT
“As I came into the final chicane, the helicopter was up in front of me and I thought we must be close to the leader,” remembers Martin Short of his greatest moment in a racing car – although he didn’t realise it at the time. “On the Mulsanne, I could see an Audi chomping at the bit in my mirrors, so I made it easy for him. Into the second chicane I let Stephane Ortelli through, but little did I know I’d been in the lead of the Le Mans 24 Hours. The ORECA Audi had pitted and was on its out-lap. Either the radio didn’t work or the guys didn’t tell me in case I did something stupid, but I had no idea. At the end of my stint I came into the pitlane and all I could see was a whole phalanx of cameras and film crews. What’s going on? You’ve only just bloody led Le Mans! It was just phenomenal.”
Not bad for a bloke who started racing in a Martlet kit car at the age of 27.
Short, now 61, spent many (mostly) happy years working his way through the club racing ranks, including five years in TVR Tuscans and on to the British GT Championship, which his Rollcentre Racing team conquered in 2003 with Mosler – all with a distant dream to stand on the podium at Le Mans. Technically, he actually achieved that early on in a Rover GTI on the Bugatti circuit, but that’s not quite the same thing. A podium at the 24 Hours? He never quite made it, although fourth in a Pescarolo in 2007 got him close. But it’s the car you see here, in which he actually led the race in 2005, that means the most to him. That’s why he still owns it: ORECA Dallara-judd SP1 chassis 006. The LMP1 car in which an ambitious, committed amateur – albeit a damn good one – kissed the sky.
To mark LMP1’S final hurrah at Le Mans as endurance racing’s top class, Short pulled out the Dallara for a celebratory blast at a mid-week British Racing Drivers’ Club test day back in February, before you-know-what ground our world to a halt. At lunchtime, he was let loose on the Grand Prix Circuit. Short gunned the four-litre Judd V10 – and all hell broke loose. Forget lunch, every face in the pitlane hung over the pitwall as the Dallara wailed down the old start/finish straight. On the other side of the track students piled out onto the balcony at the National College for Motorsport to get a glimpse of what was making that wonderful din. Modern race engines don’t make this sound. It’s why we’re already missing the golden days of LMP1, the class that could turn club racers into bona fide Le Mans heroes.
The money came first, of course. “I got a phone call from a guy who I met at a trackday,” he says of the moments that changed his life – again without knowing it at the time. “At Bedford
Autodrome, I was stood in a Portacabin next to a guy wearing a bobble hat and anorak. He said, ‘You’re Martin Short. I tried to get you some sponsorship. I work for Deutsche Bank.’ I ran outside, borrowed a TVR Cerbera, sat this guy in the passenger seat and gave him three laps. ‘Wow, that was amazing.’ I didn’t get his name, didn’t think anything more of it. The next year,
Chris East got back in touch, saying, ‘You may not remember me, would you like some sponsorship?’ We started with a little bit and ended up with quite a bit more over time.”
At the end of 2003, East made a suggestion: “‘Why don’t we do Le Mans?’ I said Porsche or Ferrari? ‘No. Top class.’ What?
‘You worry about the cars, I’ll find the money. Go find a car.’”
After a nudge from Bob Berridge, Short went to see Hugues de Chaunac at ORECA. “I flew down to Paul Ricard to see two beautiful cars that were doing nothing, with acres of spares. So I rang Chris and he said, ‘It’s a deal.’” So I shook hands with Hugues.”
“The ACO guys strolled down the paddock, grabbed my hand and gave me a Gallic nod. I was in for Le Mans”
Next stop was a Le Mans entry. “Chris and I went to see the ACO,” Short smiles. “They took us to a little bar and said, ‘So you’ve got an LMP900 [as LMP1 was then known]. What have you raced before?’ Class 2 in British GT in a TVR. ‘You know these cars are very dangerous…’ I suggested we do Sebring to prove ourselves.”
Pitted among the Audi R8s, unknown Rollcentre Racing stunned the American Le Mans Series at the 12 Hours, chassis 004 only slipping from third to fifth in the last hour with throttle cable trouble, Short sharing driving duties with British GT team-mate Rob Barff and Mosler factory driver Joao Barbosa. “After the race the guys from the ACO strolled down the paddock,” says Martin. “They reached over, grabbed my hand and gave me a Gallic nod. I was in for Le Mans.”
Short remembers his 2004 outing at the Circuit de la Sarthe as “an amazing experience”, until a bespectacled Frenchman ruined the morning. “At 6.30am I was in the car and we were lying fourth overall,” says Martin. “Sebastien Bourdais was coming up behind me at a rate of knots in his Pescarolo and hit me in the left-rear wheel, just after the Dunlop Bridge, sending me off into the gravel. I got back to the pits, and the lads did a visual check of the car. We were still in fourth place and we couldn’t find anything, so off I went. At the Porsche Curves, a bolt had partially cracked in the impact and the left-rear wheel toed out under load. The car just turned right and went straight into the concrete. It was like an aircraft crash. When it stopped, the first thing I did was try and start it, as you do. The marshals were waving to stop. So I got out and realised a