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2011
MONZA

LE MANS 2005 - Shell Endurance Academy No.3 - Calvin Hogan Race Report
Calvin Hogan, Ben Wylie and Marko Rohtlaan - 16th overall.

With an average age of 20 years and 9 months, with myself being the youngest at 19 years and 7 months. I believe we were the youngest team to compete at Le Mans, Marko and Ben had never been to Le Mans before (i raced the BMW there last year) and me and Ben had never done a 24 hour race or even a 6 hour race for that matter!...Talk about thrown in at the deep end, thanks Russell!

Qualifying...

After a very wet first qualifying session for all three of us, It became apparent once we awoke Friday morning to sunshine that the second qualifying was the all important one, until it once again started to rain slightly and meant Marko had to go out on a damp track. He was 18th in his session before coming in with 10 minutes to go, saying he wanted full slicks. He went out with 5 minutes left of the session and had already dropped to 38th place and sent the rest of us in a panic...he past the line with 20 seconds before the flag for his second flying lap in 35th position. Next time he crossed the line for the chequered flag, he redeemed himself by jumping to 13th in the session. Marko had once again set a high standard for me and Ben to follow.
However the drama didn't end there. When Marko returned after his cooling down lap, the bike was far from cool and was running at 110 degrees! This meant Ben had to ride the spare bike for his session and wasn't quite set up right and had stability problems. The best Ben could do was bring the bike in 45th position. Whilst Ben was out in his session all the mechanic's were working frantically to get the number 1 bike ready for my session, so we could try and claw our way back up the grid. The mechanics eventually found the problem and soon I was ready for my go.
My session went very well. I came in for a new rear tyre with 10 minutes to go and immediately found a second, did a 1.42.720 and was lying 12th in my session until the last few minutes when teams started to throw in qualifiers and dropped I to 15th. One consolation was that I qualified best British rider. The three other Brits in my session were all very experienced riders, Chris Burns, Phil Giles and Gus Scott. I clawed the team back to 24th overall after the problems with Bens session.

Race...

Marko being the most experienced in endurance racing, we nominated him to do the start. It was far to nerve-wracking for me or Ben, in front of a full grandstand, running and having to jump onto the bike and to start the thing. There are far to many things to go wrong for my liking! Marko immediately gained a couple of places and after his first stint, was lying in 19th place. It was now my turn and had a really good first stint and handed the bike to Ben in 12th place. In my next stint I posted our fastest lap of the race a 1.43.124, we floated between 11th and 15th way into the night.

At around 11pm Marko had a collision with a slower rider and although both stayed upright, the handlebar had moved and when he came into the pits at the end of his stint, we incurred a stop go penalty for having to many mechanics touching the bike. The maximum being allowed is 4 and we were judged to have 5 (I'm sure if our name was GMT 94 or SERT the French official's would have turned a blind eye). We spent the following 7 hours trying to gain back the time lost from the stop and go and we were back leading our group in 11th place. There were around 5 or 6 teams all within a lap of each other, which I found amazing after 14 hours of racing.
The most incredible stint for me was the 3 o'clock relay. I followed Paul Young for 30 minutes as we cut our way through traffic and barbeque smoke from the camp sites. As I mentioned, this was my first 24 hour race, therefore my 1st time riding a night and I was expecting at some point for the times to drop off by a second or two...how naive! At 3.30 I was still running 1.43's, thinking to myself how is this possible and why won't anyone slow down!

For my 6 o'clock stint things got worse, to cope with the lack of track temperature (-1 degree) - the team had decided to put me out on a intermediate front tyre to try and generate some heat because the slick wasn't hot enough. It generated no heat and after two small crashes at the same corner within 15 minutes and being rather tired and not being able to think straight I handed the bike to Ben, to give me time to work out what was going wrong. 3 laps later Ben had done exactly the same as me at exactly the same corner! 3 crashes at the same corner in 30 minutes must be a record! The obvious decision was made and we quickly returned to slicks however we had dropped from 11th to 22nd.

The remaining 9 hours was spent trying to claw our way back up the the order and I was soon back doing low 1.44's and mid to high 43's. We managed in the last hour to get back to 16th and Ben brought the bike home.
Overall a very pleasing result - onsidering the lack of experience in endurance racing and being the youngest team against very experienced riders we were happy. The only other junior team in the field retired within in 8 hours with a crash. We can't wait for the next one either at Snetterton or Oschersleben

A massive thank you to all the mechanics, timekeepers and cooks from the team, for making my debut at Le Mans such a success and hope we carry on improving and getting better results for the rest of the year.

On a personal note though, I am still looking for sponsors to carry on for the rest of the year with the Shell Endurance Academy, If anyone could help please contact me on 07732 115124 or e-mail at calvinhogan@aol.com