In this case, the year is 2001, and Team U.S.A. is made up of a group of H:O Le Mans veterans. While this year's particular Team had never raced in quite this combination, all of us knew what we were doing there, and had a pretty good idea how to do it. A few of us had shown some exceptional talent in the fine art of driving an "HO" slot car at or near its limits for some very extended periods of time. Others (like myself) were rather less gifted in that regard. Yet, we found we were able to put in a good drive, and keep the Team U.S.A. Corvette motoring around le Circuit de Sarthe (as the French call the course at Le Mans), at a reasonable pace on the Saturday and Sunday of the event.

Pre-Race

Some of us (Brad, Jason, my son Blake and I) had arrived in England on the previous Tuesday, on a ten-hour flight via Virgin Atlantic. We had one day in London, then took the train up to Derby the following day to begin work on the track. Fortunately, all the pieces did fit together, and with the help of Derby H.O. members Phil, Nick and Allan, the complete Brad-Trak for H:O Le Mans was wired, cleaned and all eight lanes fully operational by the end of the next day. Sam, Aaron and Jarum Shearman arrived Thursday, while Tony Baldock made his appearance on Friday night. Friday night was also

The Famous Le Mans Start

The race started at 1:00PM on Saturday at the Rolls Royce Aero Engine Sports Hall, and while we weren't the fastest qualifiers (Bubble and Squeak won that contest), I did feel fairly confident before the start. Not only confident that we would put in a good performance, but also somewhat hopeful that we might actually be able to win this thing! Since H:O Le Mans is a "build the car from equal parts" kind of race, you never know what mix of motors, magnets, chassis (and other bits) you are going to get; but at least this year they let us choose our box of parts and get on with the car building and tuning at 9:00 AM the day of the race. In previous years (if memory serves), we received our box of parts about 45 min. before the start of the race, or at least the start of qualifying. This caused quite a bit of what I call "controlled panic" as the head mechanic(s) of each team sorted through the parts, picking out the ones they thought would be best and assembling/tuning the resulting lot into their own unique interpretation of a Le Mans winning Tomy Turbo HO slot car.

Over Confident Perhaps?

Confidence is a funny thing, I guess, but Team U.S.A. looked so strong this year, I felt it was justified. The main reason was that we had a trio of very gifted Past Champions, supported by a second trio of less talented but equally enthusiastic drivers. Even those of us who are less talented were not able to bugger up the result too badly! Our star driver once again was Jason Boye, but this time we also had Tony Baldock and Aaron Shearman backing him up. Tony was the only Brit on Team U.S.A. this year. A previous member of the Le Mans winning Southern Comfort team and former British slot car driving champion, Tony knew the demands of Le Mans, showing off his driving ability by setting a new record of over 300 laps per hour. Yes folks, we are talking about driving very quickly indeed, with very few offs, to rack up a score like that! To round out the top three we had Aaron Shearman, a member of Team U.S.A in previous winning years. Quite the young talent, Aaron races for Team Carnage at The Fray, and did a stellar job for Team U.S.A. at Le Mans as well. In the upper slot of the lower half we had Brad Bowman, also our Team Manager and Chief Mechanic / Strategist. In addition, Brad was also the guy who built the track, as this was the first year that H:O Le Mans was a totally routed course, with the last bits of Tomy Track now relegated to the plastic "Club Night" bins. On the lower end of the driving roster was Sam Shearman (Aaron's father), and your humble writer, Rick Burneson. It was all looking rather good, I thought, with all that driving talent in our pit, plus Brad's car set-up ability to make sure the Team U.S.A. Corvette performed as well as the allotted parts allowed.
.

It was therefore with some dismay (as you might imagine!), when, at the start of the race, one of the "other" Corvettes, in this case the car of the H:ORSE Team, roared off into a lead at the start, and just kept adding on the laps. Regardless of being on lane 1, one of the slower "gutter" lanes, Paul English continued to drive the H:ORSE Corvette into a commanding lead by the end of the first hour. And while we knew that Paul was by far their best driver, it did rather shake my confidence to see him speeding off at such a rapid pace, particularly on such a bad lane! Further back in the pack, Team U.S.A. was fighting it out for 2nd place with Derby H:O Racing Club (D.H.O.R.C.), otherwise known as the Home Team. Sometimes they were a few laps up on 2nd, sometimes we were, but it was quite the battle there in the early hours. Speaking of the Early Hours, I should also point out that this is when the race is Really Fun, everyone is pretty much awake, and excited to be in such an intensively competitive slot car racing environment. Brad had also put our top drivers up first with Jason, Aaron and Tony sharing the early hours. Our only bit of bright news during this time was when one of the turn marshals told us that they'd seen the underside of the H:ORSE car whilst returning it to the track after a rare "off." He told me that he'd noticed that H:ORSE were running their green armature motor. While these Tomy "greens" are undoubtedly faster than the red wire sort that we'd used to start, they generally don't last as long either. So as the H:ORSE Corvette continued to scream off into the distance, there was at least a hope that its horsepower was a limited time offer.
.

A review of The Teams may be in order here, as the eight racing cars continue to circulate around the Le Mans track, and Saturday afternoon drifts (almost unnoticed) into evening. Up front (P1) was definitely H:ORSE, the winning Le Mans team from 1999, when their Toyota GP-C set a pace no one could begin to match. They had raced the same Toyota to 3rd place in 2000, but for 2001 they had taken the cue from Team U.S.A. (or so it seemed!) and switched to the A/P Corvette body. Their Corvette was mostly white (like the U.S.A. 'Vette), but thankfully they were four lanes away from us, and I don't think our drivers (or theirs) ever got the cars confused on the track! Paul English was their Star Driver, yet the rest of the H:ORSE crew was not exactly slow; just not quite as brilliant as Paul (thankfully!). All together a team to be feared, particularly keeping their past record in mind. In that context too, their domination of the opening hours was certainly a valid cause for concern! Other H:O.R.S.E. drivers included: Trevor Crout, John English, Keith Jones and Tony Mills (captain).

The Home Team

D.H:O.R.C. is the Derby club, the home team, and is well detailed, driver by driver, elsewhere in this article. Suffice to say that we considered them to be our biggest threat. We know they have an excellent assortment of real driving talent, and certainly the ability to set up their car, making the most advantageous use of all the bits and pieces in the box. Not a duffer in the lot, and they did win this thing last year, after all! On the other side of the coin, there is no real home team advantage to this track, since its set up only once a year and the D.H:O.R.C.'s have no greater opportunity to practice on it then the next team. All that said, they were still The Favorites, and definitely the Team to Beat. Kind of like Ferrari is in F-1 at the moment. We were like McLaren/Mercedes in this comparison, and H:O.R.S.E. was the metaphorical Williams-BMW Team.

Comfort Breeze

The Comfort Breezers were the racing team previously known as Southern Comfort. Led by the fearless Peter Baldock, and Le Mans winners in '96 (if I remember correctly), they had felt the loss of their star driver (and Peter's son), Tony Baldock. After the race last year, Tony had asked us if he could possibly join Team U.S.A. for the next H:O Le Mans. Of course we were thrilled to have Tony join us, but we knew (as did Peter!) that Team U.S.A.'s gain would also be Southern Comfort's loss. We had a rather unexpected side benefit by signing Tony, since his lovely girlfriend Becca willingly joined the Team U.S.A. support crew, along with Blake Burneson and Jarum Shearman. Southern Comfort had also chosen to run the A/P Corvette this year, but thankfully theirs was painted bright yellow and therefore not likely to be mistaken for the U.S.A. or H:O.R.S.E. cars! Other Comfort Breezers were: Peter Lakin, Steve Bryan, Jim Kelly, Nigel Sykes and Dean Wragg.

Team Continental (France)

Frank Figuls had assembled his usual excellent team, with only one driver change from last year. They were driving the Datsun 240-Z again, either the same car or one with a very similar paint livery as last year's AFX 240-Z! For some reason, Continental seems to be a consistently mid-field team, rather like Sauber or perhaps Jordan in F-1. They almost took the lead in 2000, but were not really that close this year. Never ones to be put out by their lack (so far) of a podium finish, the French add a truly international flavor to what is, after all, a scale model of a uniquely French 1:1 motor race. Since I don't understand French, I have no idea what they are talking about most of the time! Frank speaks excellent English, of course, but the rest of the team speaks only French, and are in no danger of having their Team Conversations understood by the majority of Brits and Americans. Continentals Star Driver is Thierry Taupenas, and is joined by Patrice Moinet, Gilles Pujol and (new this year) Fred Le Blond. Plus Frank, of course. I should also point out that Frank's art would win the Best Team Shirts, and Best Decorated Pit Area, if indeed such awards existed.

Bubble and Squeak

Well, you might say, that's certainly a funny name for a motor racing team! And you would be correct, of course, but not without reason. There is a tradition in England, as I've learned, that all of the left-over food from the week's meals is often thrown together into a kind of unpredictable casserole at Friday's evening dinnertime. The resulting culinary masterpiece has earned the colorful nickname: Bubble and Squeak. Within this context, then, the Le Mans team was made up of all the leftover drivers (so to speak) from the local racing team, thrown together for this race. These are the drivers who definitely wanted to compete at Le Mans, but were not stellar enough, perhaps, to make the "Varsity" D.H:O.R.C. team. They were nothing if not enthusiastic, in any case, and through the talents of their top driver did take home the trophy for the best qualifying time. In the end, their finishing position was nothing to write home about, yet they did seem to have an excessively good time with their racing, and had at least one trophy to take home at the end of the day(s)! Bubble and Squeak raced a brightly painted BMW M-1, easily the most popular body style in this year's race. B & S was made up of: Allan Bullock (captain), Roy Masters, David Anderson (the only American not on Team USA), Ben Westhead, Eric Malmcrona (Sweden) Barry Johnson and John Ovens. Going from memory here, I believe it was Ben who set the fastest lap time in qualifying and went home with the appropriate trophy.

Team 24-7

The Famous Phil Rees captained the 24-7 Team (formerly known as Race Control). Phil is the absolute right-hand-man of Nick Sismey in the organization of this event. I'm inclined to say that if it weren't for Phil (or someone like him), H:O Le Mans may have come to nothing more than a brilliant idea Nick once had! Phil does the majority of the nitty-gritty work, looking after all the detailed duties that an event this large demands. He even seems to keep a good sense of humor about it! Getting back to the Team: Also driving an M-1, Team 24-7 was made up of seven drivers who, between them, would drive for the full 24 Hours. We didn't honestly expect 24-7 to be major competition for us, but all during the event they ran well and held down a solid middle ground. In addition to all the driving and car set up done by all the other teams, 24-7 was also responsible for taking all the Official Times and keeping track of all the Official Lap Totals. They were the ones who did most of the work for us, and should be appreciated for those duties alone! 24-7 was: Terry Dingley, James Henry, Dave McPeake, Julian Neale, Adrian Owen, Lee Pateman and The Famous Phil Rees.

Bourne

The Bourne team was back for a second shot at H:O Le Mans after having a rather dismal result in their virgin year (2000). Those of you who are motor racing historians, will no doubt recognize Bourne as the hometown of the famous 50's and 60's racing team B.R.M. That would be British Racing Motors and should not be confused with Jason's "Boye's Racing Models!" If, in fact, you are a motor racing historian, you may argue that B.R.M. continued into the 70's as well. While this is technically true, my contention is that by the 70's B.R.M. was no longer "famous," but a mere shadow of its former self and in fact barely hanging on. Be that as it may, the Bourne H:O Racing Team had switched cars, abandoning the ill-handling Johnny Lightning Viper from 2000, and replacing it with the ubiquitous Tomy BMW M-1. Not that it seemed to do a lot of good, since their unfortunate result was the same as it was in 2000, but they were at least happy to have completed more laps than the previous year! Back for the 2nd year (does this make them Bourne Again racers?) were: Richard Bostock, Bill Rogers, Melvin Lane, Jamie Lawrence, Steve Rowley, Rick Wilson and Neal Bannister.

Meanwhile, back at the Race . . .

As the race wore on, it started to "come to us," so to speak. When the other H:ORSE drivers replaced Paul English the driving quality obviously went down too, and as their better green arm(s) got tired, and the Leader Board turned around as well. By the fifth hour Team U.S.A. had taken over the lead for the first time. Not that it was a very secure lead by any means. DHORC's Marlboro BMW M-1 had gotten around the H:ORSE Corvette at about the same time as the Team U.S.A. Were there to be another team with the concentrated driving ability of Team U.S.A. it would certainly be DHORC. Here you have the Fearless Nick Sismey (who also organized this whole event!), Martin Chadwick (roight!), Silent Simon Goodlip, the Very Happy John Tague, and the Jovial Allen McPeake. The point, however, is that there is not a bad driver in the lot, and I feared they might take some serious laps from us as we rotated down to the shallow end of the U.S.A. driver's gene pool. Like me, for example!

What's It Like Out There?

Fortunately, my first driving stint (one-hour) went fairly well, since Brad's new course is absolutely beautiful to drive, but also because the Corvette was running quite good at that time. Its always a good feeling to be able to drive right past the competitors on the Mulsanne (85 foot long) straight! I found this was possible with all the teams save the dreaded D.H:O.R.C. Martin Chadwick's BMW was either right with me, or just the least bit ahead after shooting down from Tetra Rouge to the braking point for Mulsanne Corner. Throughout the twisty bits he could pull away somewhat, since he is definitely a better driver than I am! My focus was "damage control," trying to lose the least amount of laps possible to the (very competitive) D.H:O.R.C.s.

The Marshal Factor

Working in my favor, Martin did have a fair number of "offs" and the Corner Marshals often helped me out further by making an absolute mess of returning his car to the track! One older Gentleman in particular earned the nickname "Father Time." Not only for his excessive age, but more importantly for the equally excessive time it seemed to take him to return a car to the track! As if that weren't enough, he really couldn't tell the front of an M-1 from the back, and placed it wrong-way-around about half the time (I smiled when I heard Martin mumble "Bloody Fool!" in his direction). Fortunately Father Time didn't have that trouble with the Corvette! Should you be so unfortunate as to have the body come off your car in the incident, he had an awful time getting it snapped back on to the chassis, often requiring someone else's help to do so. Fortunately (again) the Corvette bodies stayed on far better than the BMW examples, another small (but important!) factor working in our favor. This is a very long race, after all, and the little things do add up!

The Team U.S.A. Support Crew

While the Marshals were mucking about with the D.H.O.R.C. BMW M-1, the Team U.S.A. support crew was relaying all my lap times via my headset, so I could see how on (or off!) the pace I was on any given lap. Our lap counter/timer was one of the venerable Tomy units, located on the short straight between the Mulsanne corner and the Indianapolis / Arnage, left / right sequence. Our crew was writing down the lap times of every Team U.S.A. lap throughout the entire 24 hours, and only missed 45 or so out of the 6,794 laps we turned during the race! I think Jarum probably wrote the most laps, but both Blake and Becca took their turns with the clipboard, while keeping their eyes riveted to the constantly flashing digital read-outs. Brad was able to look at the record of lap times to see if the driver was getting tired, or if the performance of the car seemed to be dropping off. It was also up to each individual (U.S.A.) driver to decide if they wanted our crew to call out their lap times or not. I found it was very helpful, particularly since they would wait until I started down the Mulsanne straight before the news (good or bad) came over the headset!

The Early Morning Hours

After taking the lead in the fifth hour, Team U.S.A. managed to build a decent (but hardly "comfortable") lead of 40+ laps, and held it pretty much at that point for several hours. The Le Mans results are posted each hour, so everyone can see exactly how their team is doing in comparison to everyone else's, how many laps they have completed at the hour, and where they are relative to the overall event lap record. I found it comforting to see "Team U.S.A." still in first place as each hour's standings were posted! I took a short nap between 2:00AM and 4:00AM, in the Squash Courts that are part of the Sports Hall. Unfortunately, they aren't in the part that's heated, so I woke up totally frozen! The good news, however, was that upon awaking and looking at the results postings, I saw that our team had picked up a good advantage on D.H.O.R.C., as we now led by 80+ laps! That was beginning to be a little more comfortable! All of the credit for those two hours goes to Tony Baldock and Aaron Shearman, and its even more amazing since they were on the gutter lanes during that segment, i.e. lanes 8 and 1. I have no idea which D.H.O.R.C.'s were on the driving stand during this time, so perhaps their driving (or their car) was not completely up to speed.

Lead Building

Regardless, I really liked the effect it was having on our lead building! I suppose I should point out that "lead-building" has nothing to do with ego, or bragging rights or anything quite so colorful. The point is simply that anything can go wrong in a endurance race like this, and the more laps ahead you are, the more time you have to fix whatever it is that's wrong. At this point there were still nine hours remaining in the race! Sometimes, of course, the problem(s) can not be fixed. Last year, for example, we had simply used up all of our good motors, and there was nothing more that could be done. Not even five or six straight hours of Jason's brilliant driving was enough to get our lead back once it had slipped away. Hence the perceived need for "lead-building," and the quiet security blanket of "cushion" laps between our car and who ever was in second place. Maybe too, the disappointment of last year's result was still churning in my gut. Whatever the reason, I really wanted to win this one!

Better Call Jason!

The other memorable event during this period occurred when Brad was driving, and he was not at all pleased with his performance. With all the responsibility of being U.S.A. Team Captain, not to mention the added responsibility for the performance of the complete Le Mans track, Brad certainly had a lot of metaphorical "weight" on his shoulders. Perhaps at this stage of the race it was effecting his driving, but for whatever reason, neither his lap times nor his consistency were meeting his expectations. This being the case, he called The Crew (via the headset) and told them to wake up Jason. By this time, I should point out, Jason had gotten several hours of sleep. Regardless, it was pretty much "out-of-the-sleeping-bag" and "up-on-the- driver's-stand" in one fell swoop. I will admit to a moment of two of concern as the (definitely) not completely awake Jason Boye took off in our Corvette. Okay, I was wrong. Without even being awake, Jason took the same car with which Brad had been turning mid twelve-second laps, and immediately clicked off a string of laps in the low eleven-second range! As Jason continued to reach ever-greater levels of alertness, his lap times dropper further still. And Team U.S.A.'s lead building resumed.

The Final Hours

Since I am writing this completely from memory, I can't give you really good information about what was happening (results wise) with all the other teams. My focus was Team U.S.A., of course, but with an eye on both the D.H:O.R.C. and H:O.R.S.E. teams as our most dangerous adversaries. As the race wore down, and the hours slipped away (with agonizing slowness!), our lead remained large (enough) and stable, and I found myself thinking, "Yes, I think we're going to win this one!" more and more often. No one was mounting a serious challenge, and the hours were getting short. I remember wishing that the Comfort Breeze and Continental Teams were doing a bit better than they were, since I'm friends with both their team captains, but my good wishes were clearly not going to be enough to move them up in the results! With the finish less than an hour away, D.H.O.R.C had a problem with the transformer for their lane (three). Since the spare transformer had already been used during a similar incident earlier in the race, there really wasn't anything that could be done. While there was still some power to the lane, it was not consistent as the power level seemed to go up and down without warning. Simon was driving their BMW at the time the transformer went "off" and he simply pulled their car off the track. And there it sat. Until the last few minutes, that is, when Allan McPeake put it back in the slot for a few final laps. At the finish, Brad drove the Team U.S.A. Corvette across the line to end the 24 Hours. It was good to see Brad get the checkered flag; very fitting after all the time and effort he had put into the Team, and the track this year (and past years for that matter!).

It's All Over Then?

Wasting no time at all, Nick presented the H:O Le Mans Trophy to Team U.S.A. followed by the winner's "medals" and a number of Victory Photos with Team U.S.A. and our loyal support crew members. That done, a number of us (though mostly U.S.A. and D.H.O.R.C.s, plus Phil Rees) set about taking apart the track (twenty-nine 8 foot sections!), unscrewing the wires from the jumper terminals (eight per track section) and packing them all away in wooden boxes. This last bit, along with the clearing out of all the trash and the dis-assembly of the driver's platform, was accomplished in about an hour and a half. The Sports Hall had returned to its pre-race look, and the casual passers by would have had no hint of the huge slot car event that had been taking place there such a short time ago.

Victory Dinner, Then Home

After the track was properly put away Nick gave us a ride back to our hotel, then Peter Baldock treated Team U.S.A. (and our support crew) to a wonderful dinner at the local Harvesters restaurant. Well, now that I think about it, Sam Shearman was back at the Hotel sleeping (smart man!) but the rest of us were up to a bit of celebration! The following day we took the train back to London, and the day after that we were on another Virgin Atlantic Flight back to the U.S.

Overall 2001 was a very good year for me (very much a part-time racer), having been on the winning Southern CA Team at The Fray in February, and then on the winning Team U.S.A. at Le Mans in November. I would quickly point out that in neither case was I close to being the star of the team (fourth out of six and the Fray, fifth out of six at Le Mans!), but in both cases it was a great experience!