NOT ONE, BUT TWO RECORDS FALL

Yes, that’s plural … as in two records. I had set out to break just one, but lady luck and valiant efforts by Greaves Motorsports in the 19th hour of the race provided an encore. The record for youngest driver to race at the 24 Hours of Le Mans went down at about 3:43 pm on June 14, 2014, after my co-driver Tom Kimber-Smith’s opening stint. I was 16 years and 202 days old, which surpassed the 55-year-old mark by about seven months.

You can watch the record happen here from a camera we attached to the garage. Twenty four hours later we finished the race 25th overall and 11th in class and along with that came another record: youngest driver to finish the race which had been held by American Gunnar Jeanette since 2000.

My friend John Brooks recorded this insightful, history-laden summary of the record. I wrote a number of blogs for Racer.com in the lead up to the race and after the race; one on the mandatory rookie sim test, another blog about Ricardo and then a race experience recap with observations that might surprise you. And there’s a video of the unbelievable week that was Le Mans 2014.

Above all, I proved to myself that anything you set your mind to doing you can do. For me, that is what Le Mans gave to me for the rest of my life.