by Russell Atkins
Martin Short has described fourth place outright in last weekend's Le Mans 24 Hours as the “crowning achievement” of two decades' toil and commitment in motor racing, and argues if that was possible this year, a podium could just be on the cards in 2008.
Prior to this year's running of the legendary round-the-clock endurance classic, the best Rollcentre Racing had managed to achieve at La Sarthe had been 16th position in 2005. Having got his hands on a Pescarolo-Judd this time around, however, Short had somewhat loftier ambitions, though even he conceded fourth place had been beyond his wildest dreams.
“This is the crowning achievement of 20 years in motorsport,” he told
Crash.net Radio at the end of the race, beaming from side-to-side. “We started back in 1987 in a little kit-car that cost £1,700 from the
Exchange & Mart, and here we are fourth at Le Mans. It's pretty amazing.”
Short praised the performance of both the car – which set the eighth-quickest LMP1 qualifying time in the hands of Le Mans Endurance Series regular Joao Barbosa, less than two seconds shy of works Pescarolo ace Emmanuel Collard – and drivers, particularly given one of them, 22-year-old Stuart Hall, was making his Le Mans debut. He did, however, question the safety of the track in conditions that at times bordered dangerously on torrential.
“Our race was amazingly trouble-free,” the Lybian-born star explained. “That's why I bought the Pescarolo, on top of it being competitive. We had a slight problem with the diffuser; Stuart clouted something on the track, but we repaired that and we had such a big lead (over the next car) by that time that it didn't really matter.
“We didn't have the pace over the weekend we'd hoped we would have, but we did have a very strong car and despite the old man being in the driver line-up, none of us did too badly at all. The most important thing was the drivers didn't make any mistakes.
