FINAL DRIVE
RACE OF MY LIFE
I WOULD SAY LE MANS 1994 is the race from my career thatmost special to me. We were all great friends: Jeff [Krosnoff] was a great friend of mine and Mauro [Martini] was a top driver in [Japanese] Formula 3000 [where
Irvine raced before F1]. To be in the same team [SARD Toyota] as those guys was just great.
I was the quickest driver, Mauro was next and Jeff a bit slower —we were a good endurance team. We were leading it by a mile when the gearbox linkage came off [thanks to a broken weld] right at the beginning of a lap. Jeff had to hold it in gear [having stopped in front of the pits, jumped out of the car and manually selected third] and drive all the way round the track to make a pitstop.
It put us back to fourth 01 fifth when 1 got in to do the last stint and I overtook the Porsches to break a Porsche one-two. I was closing on Thierry Boutsen [who finished third in the second Dauer 962] late on in the race and I was flat out. Everyone said Le Mans was a race of attrition but I donremember driving a lap of Le Mans where I wasnflat out! Every lap was 100 per cent, just qualifying lap after qualifying lap.
In the last half hour we were doing 220 – 230mph diving between slower cars and I thought, is nuts!got past Boutsen at the last corner of the penultimate lap.
Ita race Ihave loved to have won, but I wouldnlove to do it again because there are lots of drivers who are not very[1] good. Therea huge difference in the levels of ability and I got into some situations where I wouldnwant to do the same thing again —Itoo old to be doing that!
I got into a couple of close calls with drivers who didnknow what they were doing. I raced for 20 years and never hurt myself and wouldnwant to end up like [Nelson] Piquet, who walks with a limp because he smashed his legs up [in an IndyCar accident in 3992].
Le Mans was a great team event. Grand prix cars are great and have lots of power, but Le Mans cars have torque. A grand prix is like two hours of raping and pillaging, but Le Mans is a real event.
Eddie Irvine was talking to Ben Anderson
IN PROFILE
NORTHERN IRISHMAN EDDIE Irvine started 145 GPs in a 10 – year Formula 1 career that t(X)k in stints at Jordan, Ferrari and Jaguar. He won four races during his final season at Ferrari in 3999 and finished second in the drivers’championship to Mika Hakkinen. The 1987 British Fonnula Ford champion competed at Le Mans 011 three occasions between 1992 and 1994, all with the SARD Toyota team. Now a property developer, Irvine has not raced since quitting F1 at the end of 2002.
