Life has a funny way of marking the passage of time. Discovering that cars I once raced contemporarily are now eligible for historic series is certainly an effective reminder of my advancing years! Fortunately, the silver lining is that I get to reunite with some incredible machinery that I had long assumed I’d never experience again.
Such has been the case recently with the 2004 Courage C65 LMP2 that I drove for the works team nearly 20 years ago, both at Le Mans and in the European-based Le Mans Endurance Series. Given the state of my defunct career at the start of that season, you’d never have imagined that just a few months later I’d share three LMES class wins and the championship title with my co-drivers, let alone have briefly led the LMP2 category at Le Mans in a car that qualified on pole position in its class. It really was a dream season and, given the momentum that followed, it’s not a stretch to say that the car responsible – chassis C60-No9 – possibly saved my career.
Just weeks before the 2004 edition of the Le Mans 24 Hours I was done. No drive, no
