Sweet Bird of Youth: Record-Making Youngest Drivers at Le Mans

July 5, 2014
Story By
John Brooks

There is a convention that exists in international motorsport, at least in Europe, that youth pursues the single seater path to glory - aspiring and dreaming of going to the Big League (aka Formula One). If this vision is not fulfilled, as happens most of the time, a recalibration of ambitions takes place and other forms of motor sport come into consideration - most notably endurance racing, whether in the prototype or GT format. However, there are those beginning to take a fresh approach at how to climb the ladder up the ranks of international motorsports... Which is how two young men came to be making their débuts at the 2014 Le Mans 24 Hours, each in one of the two entries for Greaves Motorsport, racing the team's Nissan powered Zytek prototypes in LM P2 class.

Alessandro Latif, 18 and Matt McMurry, 16 were perhaps the babies of the field, but their on track performances belied their years - both demonstrating speed and maturity in the most competitive and intense of arenas.

Alessandro started off the year with a drive in both the Rolex 24 at Daytona International Speedway and also in the Sebring 12 Hours, finishing both events. He is currently competing for the top German outfit, Phoenix Racing, in the 2014 Blancpain Sprint Series, sharing an Audi R8 LM ultra with the highly rated Marc Bassang. His appetite for long distance racing was whetted by the Floridian classics, so when an opportunity arose to race a prototype at Le Mans he leapt at the chance. As if making a first appearance at the Worlds Greatest Motor race was not enough to have on his plate, Alessandro was also sitting his A-Levels (the university entrance exams in the UK) during the week. He commuted to Paris from Le Mans on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to sit his maths, advanced maths and physics examinations. He explained why...

"I want to become a ‘factory’ sportscar driver one day - and to reach the very top it’s vital to study and learn as much as possible. It’s unfortunate that my A-Levels coincide with the biggest race of my career to date but needs must. My aim is to read automotive engineering at Loughborough University so the exams are extremely important. It’s not ideal commuting backwards and forwards to Paris but it’s essential, I think, in the long-term because the course at Loughborough can only help my motor racing aspirations.”

The motto for the Royal Air Force is 'Per Ardua ad Astra,' roughly translated as 'through struggle to the stars' - that would serve as a handy explanation for the mountain that Alessandro had set himself to climb. Most teenagers would find either task almost impossible, to combine both was ambitious in the extreme.

On the other side of the garage Matt McMurry was aiming to make history. At the age of 16 years and 202 days - if he started the Le Mans 24 Hours on June, 15 2014, Matt would become the youngest ever driver in the 91 year history of the race. He was looking to beat the record established by Ricardo Rodriguez in 1959, who was almost a year older than Matt.

So where had this ambition come from? Some of it can be traced to the family DNA, as father Chris was a regular competitor in the American Le Mans Series and raced twice at La Sarthe. Matt first stepped aboard a go-kart at the age of four. He raced on-and-off as a hobby for the next eight years and he joined his father at Le Mans in 2008. A year later, as a 12 year old, Matt become the youngest person to ever graduate the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving. The following year he submitted a class project about goals before graduating high school, and listed “becoming the youngest driver ever at Le Mans.” A dream was born.

It is not enough to merely have dreams, they must be backed up with talent and hard work if they are to be realized. Thirteen is the age limit in America to be allowed to race cars, so since then Matt has been on an intense training program to prepare for his Le Mans' goal and further aim of establishing a career as a professional race driver. Matt has raced in junior prototypes through IMSA Lites (where he still drives for Florida-based Performance Tech Motorsports), and single seaters in the USF2000, Formula Mazda Bondurant and Formula Skip Barber. Matt has 63 career starts in cars, five wins and 12 podiums. This year he became the first member of the Dyson Racing Junior Development Program and joined Greaves Motorsport in their European Le Mans Series campaign. He has scored a brace of fourth places in the 4 Hour races at Silverstone and Imola.

No matter who you are or what your past achievements may be, there are certain hurdles to clear if you wish to race at Le Mans, particularly if you have no experience at La Sarthe. There is an Official Test Day organised a few weeks prior to the actual event where aspiring drivers have to put in ten laps to satisfy the ACO of their fitness to race. For this year an additional requirement was introduced, a half day session in a simulator in Paris, to acclimatize the new boys to the circuit as well as the new safety rules. Even Mark Webber, a top Grand Prix driver in contention for the World Championship till this year had to take this test.

Both of our boys completed the ten laps at the Test, drove in the simulator and passed with flying colours. An invitation to drive in the Practice and Qualifying sessions prior to the race was their reward. Before then, there was the formality of Scrutineering and the famous team shots. This was potentially an issue for the #42 crew, as all three drivers were otherwise engaged in racing States-side at the weekend and had to make a trans-Atlantic dash to get signed on.

So how did Race Week pan out for the duo? Le Mans is a capricious mistress, as many have discovered down the years and I am reminded of the quote from the great Rudyard Kipling's poem If that adorns the players' entrance to Wimbledon's Centre Court: "If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same." Certainly Alessandro and Matt found this statement to reflect the reality of driving during the 2014 Le Mans 24 Hours.

Alessandro's adventures in travelling to Paris for his exams were made just a little more stressful by the intervention of that fine French tradition, the transport strike. Trains, trams and taxis were all affected as the Unions and their members were giving vent to their frustration with some issue or other. Back on track, things weren't going well either. After returning from Paris, Alessandro completed a few laps to get himself up to speed, but then valuable track time was lost when his co-driver Michael Munemann, had an indiscretion at the Porsche Curves, requiring some repairs to the car by the team. By the time they were back on track there was only time for a few laps before the session was brought to a premature conclusion because of several accidents and copious amounts of oil being dropped around the circuit. The complication for the three drivers of #41 was that each of them had to complete three laps in the dark to finally qualify to race, and Day 1 had slipped by.

Thursday was kinder to Alessandro and his teammates. While they did not get anything like the track time they would have liked, each managed their laps in the dark and were in the race. Their lap times reflected the need to be conservative and get the Qualification process out of the way.

While #41 struggled, the #42 car had no such issues. Although the Qualifying time set by team leader, Tom Kimber-Smith, was not representative either of his or the car's pace, there was a quiet confidence that things would go well during the race itself.

Friday of Le Mans week brings a day off, at least for the drivers, while the crew are still flat out trying to prepare the cars for the ordeal ahead. One tradition that has grown in recent years is the Drivers' Parade through the city centre in the early evening. While maintaining the connection between fans and competitors is vital to the unique charm of the event, the parade has become a victim of its own success, bloated with too many non-racing elements.

All the drivers were kept hanging around as the delays piled up, the process running to nearly five hours, not the optimal way to prepare for the endurance race to come.

While the races 3:00pm start time seems ages away early Saturday morning, time soon slips by and suddenly the cars are lining up on the main straight for pre-race formalities. The mechanics check everything again obsessively, and drivers prepare themselves for the ordeal ahead - everyone begins to focus.

Car #41 was started by James Winslow, a highly rated professional, and he would drive for the first two stints, getting the car up to order and attracting favourable comment. Michael Munemann was next in, when early in his spell behind the wheel disaster struck.

In a sudden downpour, the second to hit the race, Michael was heading back to the pits at reduced speed to change from slick to wet tyres, when he was involved in another pair of cars' accident. Michael managed to get the car back to the team, but it was soon apparent the damage to the front suspension pick up point was beyond immediate repair. #41 was out of the race.

A cruel misfortune, Alessandro Latif did not even get to drive a single race lap. Everyone on the team was disappointed for the young British driver, but he put a brave face on events. "I’m obviously gutted that I didn’t actually get to drive in the race itself, but the experience will be of use when I return in the future – hopefully next year. Despite having to commute between Paris and Le Mans over three days last week to take some A-level exams, that hadn’t affected my preparations or indeed restricted my on-track time in practice and qualifying prior to the weekend. Unfortunately my ‘seat’ time was constrained on Wednesday and Thursday due to many on-track incidents but I nevertheless felt that a good race result was achievable. James had driven a good stint getting inside the top-10, only for Michael, who had done a great job in the very wet conditions, to get taken out of the race by another car - resulting in irreparable damage. It can only be described as character-building. Greaves Motorsport did a good job in providing us with a competitive race car. The experience has only made me more determined to climb the racing ‘ladder’ and hopefully secure a ‘factory’ drive one day with a team like Audi.”

It was a different story with #42, at least to start with. Tom Kimber-Smith, a three-time class winner previously at Le Mans, got the team off to a great start and after one stint handed over to Matt McMurry who entered the history books, as planned all along. There were a few tears of joy from his parents as he drove down pitlane to start his first laps of the race.

Matt also experienced the sudden heavy rain and had a half-spin that beached the car, costing a lap or so, but at least he was still in the race. Chris Dyson took over from Matt for his initial spell behind the wheel and was making good progress up the leader board when towards the end of his second stint he was hit from behind while avoiding a spinning car. It took three visits to the pits to cure the imbalance on the suspension. In a class as competitive as LM P2 at Le Mans, to fall a laps down on the leaders condemns the entry to scrapping for the "also ran" places.

Progressing forward, the team got their heads down and took aim at another record, that of Matt being the youngest ever finisher. A title that fellow American, Gunnar Jeannette, grabbed back in 2000. Matt's contribution to the cause was to drive two triple stints during the night, which included at least one moment of near disaster. In his own words, "One memory that will always stand out for me at Le Mans happened during the middle of the night. I got pushed off the road by a Ferrari on the last kink before the approach to Indianapolis, I was travelling at around a 160 mph. So a I flew through the air a bit, it was like 'woah' but I managed to get the car straight and get on with my stint."

The team were climbing back up and heading for a top five finish during the second half of the race, a combination of good speed and the misfortunes of others, until fate struck again. Chris Dyson was running a strong pace through Sunday morning when he started to have gear selection problems, which got progressively worse to the point that he almost lost all drive to the rear wheels. Chris brought the car back to the pits and the team investigated the problem.

The main shaft between the engine and the gearbox had failed, normally a very lengthy job to repair as it involves a total rebuild of the transmission. When the #41 car retired early in the race, the crew were given the opportunity to leave the track but they all volunteered to work a shift pattern with the guys on #42. This really paid dividends when the problem hit and in a sterling performance the crew rebuilt the gearbox in around 50 minutes and had the car and Chris back on track in an hour.

The honour of finishing the race was given to Matt...and in a characteristically nerveless manner he delivered. #42 crossed the line and received the Chequered Flag from the ACO Race Director, Daniel Poissenot. Matt, Chris and Tom had completed 329 laps of the Circuit de la Sarthe, 2,786.3 miles or 4,483.9 kilometres for those of a metric persuasion. This was good enough for 11th in class and 25th overall, a reflection of the problems encountered during the race. Matt's final lap was also special for other reasons....."Going into the first section of the Porsche Curves on the last lap a load of confetti canons went off and the whole scene looked so cool and then coming down the pits straight and everyone cheering and making noise, it was awesome." So two young men at the beginning of their motorsport careers, each having a very different experience of the 2014 Le Mans 24 Hours. One thing is ceratin, this is not the last we have heard of either Matt McMurry or Alessandro Latif.

So what were Matt's final thoughts? "Well it feels like a big life achievement, having really worked on it for a long time, now it is done." And the next challenge? "Well if I could just finish High School.................

Sweet Bird of Youth: Record-Making Youngest Drivers at Le Mans

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