‘A GT40 is pretty much a bullet with a V8’: Alex Brundle straps in at the Le Mans Classic

An opportunity to return to Le Mans? That’s not something you ever turn down – especially when it is centred around racing a stunning 1965-spec Ford GT40 in which I had a personal and heavy involvement in building from scratch.

Between 2012 and ’22, I made nine starts at the Le Mans 24 Hours, racing primarily in the LMP2 class. Now here I was, pitching up for the 2025 Le Mans Classic in one of the greatest sports car models of them all, but one that might as well have been from a different world from the high-downforce modern prototypes I’m so familiar with.

Our GT40 is a toolroom car, newly built from constituent parts. Effectively, they are replicas but it’s slightly unfair to call them that. The concept is such that you should be able to take the door off an original and, with the minimum of fettling, fit it on the car you’ve built. This was a project created for a sequence of films documenting the build, to understand such models and how they worked and were driven in period, so it was a joy to get the chance to race it here.

We entered Le Mans Classic in Plateau Four for cars from 1962-65, a grid that is normally led by GT40s but also features AC Cobras, Jaguar E-types and other pre-66 GT staples. However, it was made clear to me a few weeks before the race that we’d be ‘shifted’ to Grid Five for cars from 1966-71. On the fifth grid, you’re up against Ferrari 512s, Porsche 917s and Lola T70s – so although the scenery is a little better, the competition is stiffer. Our GT40 was giving up 150hp with an extra 200kg, on narrower tyres than a Ferrari 512, for example. The ultimate Le Mans weapon of the early 1960s looked a bit chubby by 1971, a testament to the pace of motor sport development.

All-weather Avon tyres, homologated for our age of car (think rock-hard inters), was also a disadvantage. In contrast, a 1970s prototype has a specific dry weather semi-slick and a wet tyre so soft you can permanently indent it with your thumbnail. This was going to be entertaining!

While the reasoning for this was never expressed to me in direct terms, it’s not hard to assume event organisers Peter Auto took a look at our car-driver combination and thought it would be ‘more fun’ to see how far we get up the faster grid and ‘less fun’ if we took a podium position away from one of their regulars who had been waiting two years to run the event. To be honest, I think it was a good call because we had a fantastic race event, and also it was a good test for me.

Le Mans Classic is structured as follows: two qualifying sessions set the grid for race one, followed by three 45-minute races over the event’s 24-hour span. There is a rotation of six grids, all defined by eras, and a variety of classifications to determine the results for each based on how much power and weight you’ve got. In other words, an Index of Performance. But from the standpoint of competitors who want to win, the most interesting one is the scratch classification, which is the distance on aggregate covered by all cars on your grid within the three races.

“The contrast to racing at the Classic compared to the contemporary 24 Hours is stark”

The contrast in approach to racing at the Le Mans Classic compared to the contemporary 24 Hours is, as you’ll probably imagine, stark. The first thing you’re aware of is that even though you’re not racing for 24 hours solid and the team gets a chance to look at the car between races, you’re also not turning up with four front ends, five rear ends, three gearboxes and all the other spares that go with it. We arrived with just one of everything. So if you break a gearbox, it’s over. If you buzz the engine, it’s over. If you bounce heavily over a kerb and damage the suspension, you might be able to find something in the truck – but realistically, you’re stopping. You have to drive with a heightened sense that the whole thing has to last. That being said, within those boundaries, you’re still pushing.

A historic GT forced me to recalibrate everything I knew about the circuit. The first time I came through Porsche Curves, I ended up with an armful of oversteer heading for the outside wall, thinking, “Yeah, that’s about as fast as that goes through there.” As a driver, you retain a muscle memory for Le Mans, and I’m so used to charging into the first right-hander over the bump as you come off the road section and onto the full-time racetrack at a certain speed. I’ve always considered myself ‘quite good in there’ – pride comes before a fall! I was lucky to get away with it.

A lack of downforce means the apex speeds are lower and grip levels reduced, but the reaction time to fix a problem is resultantly much longer. I skidded through the middle of the corner using steering as brakes and just about kept it on the road. As with every circuit in a classic racer, corners also ‘sprout’ that you previously had not considered. I found something similar at Silverstone when I first drove historic cars through Woodcote. At Le Mans, the kinks on the run to Indianapolis are barely noticeable in an LMP car – but boy, do you have to think hard about those in a GT40. The nose lifts aerodynamically at speed, meaning that you need all the road in these kinks, which are a generous lift at 160mph in traffic or any inclement condition.

But despite the change in rhythm, it was good to be back! What always blows your mind about classic cars is the terminal speed they achieve as they slip through the air drag-free, which aligns beautifully with what is special about Le Mans: just how fast the car is going for how long. We reached almost 180mph down towards the first chicane, which is similar to the terminal speed of an LMP2 car at the same point, but feels faster due to significantly less downforce and chassis complexity, helping the car swallow the crown and bumps in the centre of the Mulsanne.

A GT40 is pretty much a bullet with a V8, so you just accelerate and accelerate. This effect, coupled with a long fifth gear and a historic braking system, means braking is a process, not an event. As you reach the braking point and squeeze the pedal to find the limit of deceleration, you can feel the balance of braking adjusting as the car moves over the uneven surface, and the braking zone offers you windows to shift down when the rear feels settled enough to do so.

You think, “I’d better start getting down the gearbox.” But you’ve got to count to three before you down-change, because the gear ratios you’re running are so long you can destroy the engine on the first downshift. Had I come into this car without any historic racing experience, I’d have blown the engine to bits on the fifth to fourth shift.

With undrilled discs, the brake temperature is also incredibly variable; you drive the circuit with a mental thermometer on the brakes, anticipating braking performance in each zone and spacing the gearchanges accordingly. Temperature builds through the middle sector in the big stops and dissipates through the first and final sectors. With no ducting allowed by the car’s historic technical passport, another 40m was required to compensate for that in the final big stop at Mulsanne corner, for example.

Red flags interrupted qualifying. Still, I benefited massively from knowledge of the racetrack and was happy to qualify eighth. To finish the event in such a position would be a dream with the competition we had.

My first race began at 5pm on Saturday. I got up to sixth place off the line, zooming around behind a couple of T70s, finding my feet and getting my bearings. But then I fell afoul of a historic racing quirk. The mandatory pitstop window allows teams sharing a car between drivers the opportunity to swap without disadvantage. It was open for 15 to 30minutes during these 45-minute races, with a penalty for pitting outside of these times. However, the pits remain open, regardless of the presence of safety cars and slow zones. Thus, pitting under the safety car saves minutes rather than seconds.

An early safety car was deployed in race one. Le Mans’s typical three safety cars were scrambled and I found myself at the head of the queue behind the second car because the quicker cars ahead of me had gapped me. We’d passed 9min of the race on the pitboard last time by, and a race lap in the GT40 is 4min 30sec to the line – but how much longer is a lap behind the safety car? Would I circulate to the pits within the window to take an advantageous, cheap stop?

There’s no pit-to-car radio allowed, so you’re making your own decisions. It would have been a good idea to have a stopwatch on the dash… but we didn’t. I started looking around, desperate to find one of the big screens that are typically located at the exit of the Porsche Curves to check the time. Lo and behold for the Le Mans Classic they don’t put as many up. Without knowing precisely what time it was and whether the pit window had opened, neither Frank Stippler in a Ferrari behind me nor I chose to come in, but those behind – probably with stopwatches on their dashes! – did so.

Then, of course, the next time around the race went green and I had to do my stop under racing conditions. So having made a heroic start, I dropped down the order and managed to finish 22nd, losing 2min. What can I say? I’d normally have a strategist and a radio!

Also suboptimal was a rear brake problem discovered before the second race, which was held just after midnight. Big stops at Le Mans from high speeds had caused our rear brakes to experience temperatures they had not previously suffered. During the gap, as they cooled, the pads glued themselves to the discs, so we had a bit of a panic to get out for the race. We were there with vices, grips and all sorts. We ground and squeaked the car into the assembly area. “Are these brakes going to work?” I thought as I donned my balaclava under the floodlights – just the sentiment you need to take onto the Mulsanne at night.

The forecast rain had begun to fall for race two, although not as heavily as it would later. I began from where I finished the first race, in 22nd, but had a mega start in the dark. There are plenty of pro drivers on the Le Mans Classic grids but there are also many who are just there for fun. It was a bit like Space Invaders weaving through these guys, and I was eighth by the end of the first lap, then moved up to sixth on the second. The high speeds did their job of cleaning up the rear brake disks for more abuse – a lucky escape!

Then a massive accident occurred (which didn’t involve me) on the Mulsanne, and the race was red-flagged and not resumed due to barrier repairs. By that time, we’d managed to break the windscreen wiper and fill the lights up with water, so I wasn’t unbelievably upset… My Le Mans snakes and ladders game continued as the organisers then discounted the shortened race, and therefore my progress, from the event result.

“The weather was howling, with water on the straights and rivers in my least favourite places”

By the time we got to race three at 8am, the weather was howling, with standing water on the straights and rivers in all my least favourite places. Due to the annulment of race two, I started again in 22nd position, and it had become clear in the dark of the second race that to get a result, I needed rain in a ‘Goldilocks zone’. Enough moisture to instil a cautious pace from those less versed in the Le Mans circuit than I, but not enough so that my only homologated period tyre option offered a delta in stability so enormous compared to the later car’s full wet option that I’d be beaten regardless of ability or effort! This rain looked way too much.

This time, I went from 22nd to seventh on that opening lap. But all I was thinking was, let’s not smear this GT40 down the wall at Mulsanne as the car started disconcertingly floating on the standing water in the flat-out sections. I spent the first sector pinned to the outside white line. Years ago, I learnt a trick at Le Mans following Jan Magnussen behind a safety car, that in such conditions on the Mulsanne straight, it’s best to straddle the crown of the road where it’s driest. That day, I was trying to keep an LMP2 on the road behind the safety car. In this case, I was trying to achieve racing speed in a classic car, but the circuit responded similarly. Inside braking into Arnage is another trick; there is much less rubber build-up for safer braking. Using the run-off to clear the flooded road on the entry to Porsche 1 was a must. Mercifully, the rain eased in the middle of race three, and I was able to make some progress.

With Chevron B19s buzzing around me it was a tough race but I made it to seventh. The critical point was the time gained over many of my pursuers, which was enough to overcome my blunder in race one and vault me up the ‘scratch standings’ in aggregate time. A fifth overall in a grid in which our GT40 had very little business was satisfying.

More satisfying, though, is the brutal, beautiful experience of taking a time machine back to what, for me, will always be the greatest years of racing. What a life it must have been competing with the might of Ford behind you in these cars, where driver skill was the deciding factor on most days. Never have I been so sure that I was born in the wrong era of motor sport.

It’s been three years since my last Le Mans 24 Hours, so it was good to go back, especially in a car in which I’ve invested so much of myself. Now the classic meeting is happening every year, and Le Mans itself is tightening towards a whole field of works Hypercars, it feels like this is the Le Mans race weekend amateurs might focus on – kind of what GTE Am used to offer in the 24 Hours. Although the fact that more recent classes from the past 20 years are now eligible is something I find annoying. I don’t like to be considered historic! Especially as I’m still writing to people trying to get myself back into the Le Mans 24 Hours itself. On the flip side, it means that if anybody has bought one of the nine cars that I’ve raced in the main event, and needs a Le Mans Classic co-driver, I’m sure I could pencil you in…