Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Evening With A Legend: Butch Leitzinger

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Evening With A Legend: Butch Leitzinger · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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  Evening With a Legend is a series of presentations exclusive to
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  legends of the famous 24 hours of LE MANS giving us an opportunity
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  to bring a piece of LE MANS to you.
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  By sharing stories and highlights of the big event, you get a chance
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  to become part of the Legend of LE MANS with guests from different
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  eras of over 100 years of racing.
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  Tonight we have an opportunity to bring a piece of LE MANS to you.
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  Sharing in the Legend of LE MANS with guests from different eras
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  of over 100 years of racing.
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  And as your host, I'm delighted to introduce Butch Leitzinger, best known
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  as an ALMS driver with Dyson Racing.
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  He has also driven for a variety of other teams and race series.
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  He's a three time winner of the Daytona, 24 hours in 19 94, 97 and 99.
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  He won two IMSA drivers championship titles in both 97 and 98 while
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  driving for Dyson Racing.
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  And he was named.
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  2002 Rookie of the Year in the TransAm series and has raced in both the
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  next tail and a Bush NASCAR series.
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  Butch has attempted to conquer the 24 hours of LeMans six times in
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  his career, driving for Panos in 97 and 99, team Cadillac in 2000.
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  Then clinching a podium with Bentley in 2001 and returning to Bentley in 2002
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  with a final run with Risi in 2003.
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  And he's here with us tonight to share his motorsports journey.
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  And with that, I'm your host crew chief Eric from the Motor Inc. Podcast Network.
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  Welcoming everyone to this evening with a legend.
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  Butch, welcome to the show.
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  Yeah, thank you very much, Eric.
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  Like all good stories, there's an origin.
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  So take us on your road to Lamont.
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  What led you up to your first race in 97?
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  Well, it, the first time I was ever actually at Lamont was 1994.
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  I drove the Nissan 300 ZX Turbo and we won at Daytona.
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  And that meant an invite to Lamont with Nissan, but I was only in the second
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  car and I was, you know, the, the reason I was even in, in the car in the
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  first place was as, as reward because I won GTU Championship the year before.
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  You know, I've been trying to go to Lamont for forever.
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  So it was always kind of like, well, you know, we don't have
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  a budget for a second car.
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  And they had Paul OSI in the second car and he had some means, and Eric Vanderbilt
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  had some sponsorship with lease plan.
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  They had a third seat that still wasn't filled.
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  Frank Kitz was running a Nissan Motorsport, and so I was bugging
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  him all the time, you know, get me there, get me there.
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  And I made the mistake of saying, just get me over there and if I can't
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  drive, you know, I'll do tires for you.
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  And I kind of said that as a throwaway comment, but came back to bite me
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  because I got sent over there two weeks early because they found out
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  that I took French in high school, went over with Gary Cummings, who was.
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  Doing the, uh, the advance prep for it.
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  And so I spent two weeks kind of preparing for the team to come over.
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  Still not knowing if I was gonna drive, you know, that was given the,
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  I think about an hour's warning.
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  I, I, I live in State College, Pennsylvania.
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  I got a phone call that said, okay, we have a flight for you out of Newark.
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  In, in about six hours and it's about four hours away.
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  So I, I had to throw my stuff in a bag and hightail it for the airport, you
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  know, and it was still just like the hope that maybe third seat wouldn't be filled.
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  It eventually was filled, a gentleman that had some backing
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  from a Japanese television station.
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  So then I spent the week of race week being a tire buster, just
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  taking the tires back and forth, but still as an American in 1994.
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  You know, Lamont.
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  Like right now there's quite a bit of transfer between the US and Lamont.
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  You know, there's like a lot of teams, a lot of cars make the trip pretty easily.
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  Back then, it was much more rare.
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  There wasn't that much, uh, representation of Americans at Lamont.
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  It had always been a dream of mine to be at Lamont, preferably
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  to race, but just to be there.
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  So this was quite possibly my one chance to ever get there.
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  Having said all that, how wonderful it was to be there, I would not do it
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  again as a crew member, because that, that was, that was a long, long day.
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  So up until that point, had you raced in Europe yet?
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  I had not.
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  The only thing that I'd done, not in Europe, but in Japan a few times,
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  there was an invitation some of the teams had from a Japanese group to
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  bring the GT cars over and, and we raced at Fuji twice and at auto.
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  Once.
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  Yeah, so this was my first time racing in Europe as well.
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  So the first time you go to LA by, you're there as crew, let's just say,
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  hoping that they need a driver to fill in and you're anxious and you
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  got your helmet ready and all that.
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  What was your first impression of LE MANS, even as a worker bee or as a spectator?
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  What did you think of it compared to the tracks you had been running in the States?
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  It was really impressive.
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  I had never seen that level of facility before.
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  You know, this was.
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  Right after they had built the main complex, the old pit complex, quite
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  famous, but also quite famous for, you know, not being modern standards.
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  But, uh, yeah, so it was truly impressive seeing that level at a, at a road course,
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  you know, 'cause in the states at the time, in 1994, like Watkins Glen, and
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  trying to think of other tracks that we have in, in the states, you know, most of
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  them hadn't been updated from 1970s, you know, so it, it was impressive to see just
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  even that level of facility at the time.
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  And then once getting to the circuit itself, it was really impressive,
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  you know, in my two weeks I was there before the race, being able to drive
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  on the course itself and trying to imagine when there weren't, you know,
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  Lori's going back and forth on the road with groceries and things that,
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  that, you know, there cars going 200 and whatever miles an hour on it.
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  It was kind of the culmination of reading magazines for 20 years at that point.
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  So earlier that year, like you said, you won the Daytona 24 hours in 1994.
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  How did you put the deal together with Payos and who helped you along the way?
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  I benefited a lot from relationships that I had.
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  I driven with James Weaver and Andy Wallace at Dyson Raising from
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  1995, and we got along really well.
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  We were very compatible as code drivers and we had quite a bit of success.
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  Actually.
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  We won Daytona 24 hours together, beginning of 97 and Don Payos.
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  In, in 1997, I decided that he wanted to go to LE MANSn and he did
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  it, you know, in a typically Don Penos way of, didn't do it by half.
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  And he went in, he had Adrian Renard build him a car, and he had David
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  Price run the team for him at LE MANSn.
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  Both James and Andy had very good relationships with David.
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  Andy had driven the McLaren F1 with price's team, so they
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  were like really good mates.
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  So when it came time to get a, a third driver for Lamont, you know, they just
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  kind of poked him and said, you know, why don't you take a look at Butch?
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  And, and he said, who's that?
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  And he, he refused to call me Butch from the moment I met him, he said.
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  But now, and if you know, pricey, there was quite a few other words that
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  were thrown in there, but he just, uh, you are buzz, buzz light, you.
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  So from then on, he, he just called me Buzz.
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  But yeah, so I was able to just kind of get dragged in through my friends.
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  So you get to LE MANS at that moment, were you comparing and
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  contrasting Daytona to LE MANS?
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  Were you making those?
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  Comparisons or was it just on a totally different level?
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  It was a totally different level.
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  This was where I benefited hugely with James and Andy being my teammates.
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  And not only that, they convinced Pricey to hire me, but before any of us went on
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  the track, we went around the track and they gave me tips the entire way around.
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  A lot of things to remember and also really one of the things
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  they did was put into me.
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  How dangerous this place is, the speeds that the cars are going,
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  there's often enormous accidents.
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  And you know, one, actually one of the greatest tips that they gave
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  me was because the straits are so long that it's a little bit easy
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  to kind of lose concentration.
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  You know, you start looking at the gauges and you know, okay, like you
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  start making notes like, oh, remember to tell them that when I come in.
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  And the tire pressures of this.
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  And then miss your breaking marker because you've been going down the street for the
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  last 20 seconds or, or whatever it was opposed to most normal racetracks where
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  it's just constantly turn, turn, turn.
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  It's a different rhythm to it there.
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  But yeah, so it was a big help having them to really bring me up to speed
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  on the seriousness of the track.
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  And then in spite of being there, you know, you're, you're there for the
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  Wednesday, Thursday, you know, with quite a bit of practice time, but most of
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  that goes away pretty quickly, you know?
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  And then actually we had pre-qualifying then, but.
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  Every lap of pre-qualifying was taking up with Andy Wallace driving because
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  we didn't have very much speed.
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  We got in by the skin of our teeth, actually both for pre-qualifying and
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  qualifying itself because that year they, they invited to the race more
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  people than were going to start.
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  So I think it was two cars we're going to go through all qualifying
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  and then not be able to race.
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  And we were almost that car just 'cause the car wasn't what
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  it would eventually become.
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  We, we were struggling a lot with power and with a lot of
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  reliability problems with the car.
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  But yeah, so all pre-qualifying was taken up with Andy driving, so
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  I never drove in pre-qualifying.
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  For the race weekend, if I remember right, I got a few laps in a
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  night practice that was pretty eye-opening in every kind of way.
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  You know, I I, I went out at night.
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  It's not like Daytona where everything's lit up, you know, even, you know,
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  the lights were fairly decent, but you're very quickly driving past
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  your headlights at 200 miles an hour.
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  And I remember somebody blew an engine, so there's oil all over the
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  track, so they had local yellows.
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  And a bit of a shock to me coming from the US but the way they would handle
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  the yellows was there'd be a coursework, you know, there, there were people like
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  spreading oil dry out on the track and then a coursework just standing on the
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  road on the racetrack with a little reflective light to catch your headlights.
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  That was quite a shock to me.
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  I. Like in, in, in the States, it would probably be a red flag.
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  You know, everyone in the pits, well, we take care of this stuff.
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  That wasn't the mechanism there.
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  So I kind of had to get a little more aware of the difference in attitude,
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  I suppose, between the US and Europe.
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  And then I did the warmup before the race, so like, you know, maybe six
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  or seven laps before the race itself, which, which is a fairly common thing.
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  And keep in mind, six or seven laps is still quite a bit of miles.
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  You know, you, you don't have that as much repetition to really be able to extract
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  a great lap time out of the car just because you don't have the experience yet.
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  You brought us into 97 and you were no stranger to endurance racing by
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  this point, and you were still sort of talking about the comparing and
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  contrasting of Daytona and Lamont's here.
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  Daytona, like you said, a lot of turns, a lot of turns.
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  You'll do 200 miles an hour, but you'll do it for a brief period of time and then
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  you gotta come deep into turn one and just lose all your speed and kind of start
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  the whole process over again, as we know.
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  But the physical demands of Lamont, not only the mental demands of that
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  concentration of running at night and changes in weather conditions.
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  'cause that's inevitably what happens at Lamont because it's.
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  So big.
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  After being there in 94 and then 97 and and continuing your attempts,
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  how did you have to physically prepare for something as big as LE MANS
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  compared to the races you were doing?
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  Stateside.
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  LE MANS doesn't beat you up as much as Daytona, but it's very different mentally.
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  Daytona.
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  The real issue, at least in the day, is that, you know, you might have 70 cars
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  on the track at the start of the race.
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  The feeling was literally like a, like one of those video games where
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  those cars just kind of meandering all around, you know, and, and you're
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  meant to like be like, be able to slice through all these little jamer cars,
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  yet you're, you're just constantly evading cars and slicing through traffic.
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  So I. At Daytona, your lap time might vary by five seconds a lap easily.
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  We hopefully avoided a few crashes and things like that.
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  And you come around, an experienced crew chief would just look at that and say,
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  well, I must have had a, you know, a few, a few things happen that lap, but
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  like that wouldn't be a cause of alarm or anything at lamont because there were
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  only at, at the time, I'd race things 'cause 48 cars over eight miles of track.
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  So every lap is like almost qualifying, you know, you
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  don't really have much traffic.
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  One things about Lamont is that because the laps are so long, the team managers
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  don't have a whole lot else to do, except for like, look at the, at their notebook
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  and look at what lap time you just turned.
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  And so, you know, they, they stare at that for four minutes or, you know,
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  three minutes, 50, whatever it was.
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  And as they come.
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  Butch is a a little bit slow today.
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  Like that last lap was two seconds slower than the lap before.
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  You know, I, I think you might be losing it just from, uh, being able to keep your
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  job, you know, or get a job for next year.
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  You really have to kind of impress them every lap and, you
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  know, really kind of have the car standing on its nose at, at Daytona.
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  If you made it around for the lap.
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  It was a good lap.
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  At Lamont, you really had to be with a good lap time, so that
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  that was the biggest change in mental how to go into the race.
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  At Daytona, you really had to take care of the car and make sure that you
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  didn't have any body work damage or anything just from touching other cars.
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  And at Lamont there weren't that many opportunities to.
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  So in 97 you ran the Penos GTR one, which is in the same realm of cars,
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  let's say the Corvettes and the Vipers and things like that that we saw here.
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  Stateside and A LMS, which the ESP ASPIRAnte GTR one is one of the more
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  memorable cars from that era, by far.
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  I mean, it's instantly recognizable.
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  The next time you come to LE MANS in 99, you come back with.
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  The infamous Payos, LMP Roadster, and you're partnered with
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  David Braham and Eric Bernard.
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  Obviously, Don Payos wants to keep you on staff.
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  Is that how the story goes?
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  How did you come back to run with Payos for a second time?
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  You know, in nine seven, we didn't have much success really.
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  We had actually, we had quite a few problems then in, in 98.
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  Don expanded the team quite a bit and, and had a lot of really high
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  talent drivers for the whole year.
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  They didn't need someone to come in just for the, the one race, uh, at Lamont, but
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  for 99 they actually had, had switched and Tony Dow would run the program in 98.
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  Then he let Tony Dow go and Tony Fox came in and, and ran the team, and it
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  was kind of run a little bit smaller.
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  They didn't have kind of a cast of thousand drivers.
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  It was, went back to, they had.
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  Two drivers per car for the year, and they needed a third for
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  the endurance races for Lamont.
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  And fortunately, at 99 I won again with Dyson.
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  You know, that looked kind of good on the cv and so talked to Don and, and
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  he was agreeable to bring me in for the third seat and then the next year.
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  2000 you've returned to LE MANS this time.
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  Totally different team.
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  Mario Andretti basically takes your seat at Payos.
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  They run the same car the next year in 2000.
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  But you're back with Cadillac running with Andy Wallace again.
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  So how did the switch happen?
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  You jumped from Payos to Cadillac.
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  How did that work out?
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  It was run by Bill Riley, the Cadillac program.
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  I'd been driving the Riley Scott Ford in the States with Rob Dyson
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  for quite a few years by that point.
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  And we had a lot of success and I, and I knew Bill pretty well.
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  At the end of 99, I didn't really have a full-time drive for the next year because
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  Rob Dyson realized that the Riley's time was getting pretty old and he was looking
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  at getting something else, but he wasn't really sure that he was going to, and so
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  he was on the fence of doing anything.
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  And so I started talking to Bill Riley and Cadillac.
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  Yeah, so that came about and, and because Andy was there too, that, you
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  know, I, I felt very good about that and I had a lot of respect for Bill.
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  The program itself didn't go that well.
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  I mean, it really comes down to the, the engines didn't make much power.
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  They had a directive from Cadillac that the car had to go 200 miles an
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  hour on, on Miles San, and it did.
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  They reached that goal.
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  I, I think, where it was like right at 200 miles an hour and we were, I think,
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  the second fastest car in the speed traps.
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  But we were also like 13th and 14th fastest on the, on the actual lap times.
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  You know, the car just didn't make much down for us in order to meet that goal.
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  Our quartering speed was pretty poor.
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  Reliability wasn't great either.
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  We ran Daytona and Seabring before.
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  Lamont had a lot of problems, a lot of gearbox problems.
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  They had to actually re-engineer the back of the car and used a different gearbox.
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  From what we started with, the tires weren't really
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  the right tires to be using.
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  You know, at Lamont, if you're not on Michelin, it's,
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  it's almost a waste of time.
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  I worked with some really great people for that, but it was, you know, a lot of great
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  people bashing their heads against the wall because we just weren't fast enough.
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  So what I'm hearing is you were really missing the payos at that point.
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  Yeah, the Enos was good.
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  You know, the open top Pantos in 99 was a brand new car.
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  I'm gonna forget the designer's name, but basically cut the top off
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  the car, but obviously did a lot of other engineering on the car as well.
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  It actually, it really was a missile.
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  I mean it, it was a really good fast car.
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  Robert Yates did the engines and they made a ton of power.
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  It was a really good car.
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  It was very odd driving both the original Panos and the open top car.
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  The seating position was very far back, almost like over the rear axle.
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  The actual feel from the car there.
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  There's a lot of movement.
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  When, when you're in a normal prototype, you're just kind of behind the front
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  wheels and you're kind of at the pendulum point between the front rear,
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  so you don't get that much moving.
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  And especially in ya when the car starts to slide, your butt might move an inch
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  or two inches in, in relation to the, the front of the car, and you kind of can
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  scale like how much of a slide you're at.
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  But with sitting so far back, number one, like, like over any bumps.
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  There was quite a bit of movement.
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  All the rear movement of the car, you were kind of on top of the, the axle
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  and then the normal slide your butt would actually be moving like, you know,
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  maybe a foot compared to the front axle.
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  So like it took a long time to really trust could go as far as
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  what it felt like, like going incredibly sideways with the car.
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  But it was actually the same amount, but you were so much farther back,
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  it was changing your perspective.
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  So at this point you're becoming a household name at LE MANS, and 94 is
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  the tire guy and the 97 9 9 2000.
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  Now we've reached 2001 and you switch teams again and you end up at Bentley.
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  So how did that play out?
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  And that again was through, uh, James and Andy.
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  James had done a lot of the testing for Bentley with Richard
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  Lloyd's program, and both James and Andy had driven the Audi RHC.
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  In 1999 when I, when I was in the payos, and again, it was a situation
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  where they needed a third driver.
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  James was very good about pointing out that Bentley's biggest
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  market was the United States.
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  You should have this guy on.
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  And, and I certainly tried to work that angle as much as I could too.
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  Yeah.
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  And, and so I, I was able to convince them to gimme a ride for it.
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  Unfortunately, James ended up not doing the race with us because of
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  some disagreements that he had.
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  It was really unfortunate 'cause James and Andy and I got along so well.
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  It, it would've been great to share the car with him, but it
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  was a very high stakes program.
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  'cause Bentley put a lot of, you know, resources into it, but only one race.
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  You know, it's, it's not like.
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  You can have a bad race, but you know, maybe have a few good races elsewhere
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  in the year and at the end of the year can say, well, you know, at
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  least we had some success with this.
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  Everything was just piled on for Lamont and that was it.
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  That sounds like a French manufacturer.
• 17:24
  That only shows up once a year.
• 17:27
  Yes, yes.
• 17:28
  No, it, uh, it's kind of the same idea as well because Bentley, I think the reason.
• 17:32
  They were interested in the first place was just the history
• 17:35
  that Bentley had at Lamont.
• 17:36
  It didn't really make as much sense to the board, I'm sure to win a race at
• 17:40
  Elkhart Lake as opposed to at Lamont.
• 17:43
  You know, Lamont was really the only thing that they were interested in.
• 17:46
  Definitely an iconic win for Bentley for them to come back and all that.
• 17:51
  But what's interesting, couple threads we need to pull on here because.
• 17:54
  Many may not know.
• 17:55
  And you touched upon something really important, which is the Audi R eight
• 17:58
  C, is that at this point, Volkswagen Audi group had purchased Bentley,
• 18:02
  and so you've got all this German backing and engineering, you know,
• 18:05
  controlling as a small boutique British manufacturer that has racing pedigree.
• 18:10
  That goes back to the beginning of cars.
• 18:12
  The R eight C was a previous generation prototype that was, I
• 18:17
  hate to say, a complete failure.
• 18:18
  It was their closed cockpit version of the original R eight, always in
• 18:22
  the shadows of the BMWV 12 and the Mercedes GTR and the Porsche nine 11
• 18:28
  GT one, and all those kinds of cars.
• 18:29
  And it never really made a name for itself until the next generation car came out.
• 18:34
  So I think it's funny that they sort of went back and pulled the
• 18:36
  REC out of mothballs and said.
• 18:39
  We're gonna change some body panels, but basic physics and core of it.
• 18:42
  It's the same car.
• 18:43
  We'll paint it green and we'll call it the speed eight.
• 18:45
  Did you feel some of that working with Bentley, that it was like
• 18:48
  there was this shadow of Porsche and Audi looming in the background?
• 18:52
  Oh, for sure.
• 18:53
  There was no mistaking that we were a part of the Volkswagen group, but it still was.
• 18:57
  Kind of a bunch of British people working under the Volkswagen umbrella.
• 19:01
  Garas, right?
• 19:02
  Yeah, a group.
• 19:03
  RTN was the people who built the car.
• 19:05
  Peter Ellery was a designer, both of the RHC and the Bentley.
• 19:09
  But it, but it, it was from 99 with the RHC to 2001 when we had the Bentley.
• 19:13
  It was a complete redesign 'cause obviously.
• 19:16
  As you said, I hate to say failure, but it was, it was certainly not a success.
• 19:19
  They had a a lot of trouble, you know, my friends were driving the
• 19:22
  car, so I was paying attention to it and I, I saw it was in the pits
• 19:25
  a lot when it was even running.
• 19:27
  I know they even had like doors come flying off, you know, it was just
• 19:30
  one of those things where, you know, it was a, it was another one year
• 19:32
  program only for LeMans and I, and I know they had very little testing.
• 19:36
  You know, they, they tried to do testing when we were at Paul Ricard and they
• 19:39
  spent very little time actually on track.
• 19:41
  You know, I think that they learned.
• 19:43
  A lot of what not to do with the, the first car.
• 19:45
  And Peter was able to design a, a really nicely balanced and also very pretty car
• 19:50
  with the Bentley, with the, the exp the Bentley was a prototype and Audi was also
• 19:55
  there with the R eight Roadster, right?
• 19:56
  The R eight R at the same time.
• 19:58
  And so people were like, well, Bentley won, but Audi won.
• 20:01
  They're book print.
• 20:02
  Wait, so there's more than one class, but it wasn't like today where it's LMP one
• 20:07
  GTP now and LMP two, and there used to be P three and all these kinds of things.
• 20:11
  So you were in LMP 900 and then the Audi R eight was in LP one, but you
• 20:18
  were still fighting for an overall win because the cars were that close, right?
• 20:22
  Yeah.
• 20:22
  They had different classes, categories.
• 20:25
  And they each had a different trophy.
• 20:26
  We were really the only ones in the LMP 900.
• 20:30
  We finished third.
• 20:31
  Overall, I got a trophy that says first place on it from Lamont, but
• 20:36
  the reason we were there was to win overall, you know, so Bentley was very
• 20:40
  happy with that first year result.
• 20:42
  You know, had kind of told us that, you know, anything in the
• 20:44
  top 10, like really finishing the race was the most important thing.
• 20:47
  'cause it was really a three year program finishing the race.
• 20:50
  Top 10 would be good.
• 20:52
  Top five would be great, was kind of like what we were built up to.
• 20:55
  So to get on the podium was pretty huge.
• 20:57
  But in our minds, we placed third because the reason we were there was
• 21:01
  to compete against the Audis, you know, the, the, the organizers had done their
• 21:05
  best to try to equalize what a time would be between the two different cars.
• 21:10
  We had a smaller tire, but a little bit better aerodynamics,
• 21:12
  a little bit bigger restrictor.
• 21:14
  In their view, you know, we should be pretty close.
• 21:16
  And we were pretty close.
• 21:17
  So like it actually did a pretty good job with that.
• 21:19
  But yeah, so, uh, we placed there, we actually had had quite
• 21:21
  a few problems in the race.
• 21:23
  2001 was the year that it rained cats and dogs for quite a bit of it.
• 21:27
  And one of the, uh, air intakes for the shifting mechanism took
• 21:30
  on a lot of water and failed on both the cars on our team car.
• 21:35
  That was Guy Smith, Martin Brundle and, and Stef Orelli.
• 21:38
  It failed enough.
• 21:39
  It was stuck in six.
• 21:40
  And they weren't able to make it back without burning out the clutch with me.
• 21:44
  It happened a few times and I kept carrying on.
• 21:46
  You could kind of trick it a little bit with grabbing the clutch
• 21:49
  and shifting at the same time.
• 21:50
  You could take some load off of it and it would still shift, but eventually it did
• 21:53
  stick, but it stuck in fourth gear, so I was able to make it back to the pits.
• 21:56
  And then we did a swap on it, but, and I think the swap probably took.
• 21:59
  I wanna say like 40 minutes or, you know, or may, maybe not that long, but
• 22:02
  it might've been like a 20 minute stop.
• 22:04
  So we lost a lot of time with that.
• 22:06
  You didn't have the Audi advantage of un bolting the whole rear end and
• 22:09
  putting a new one on within the context of a lap and then going back out.
• 22:12
  No.
• 22:13
  No.
• 22:13
  And, and we did not.
• 22:14
  And that was really disappointing.
• 22:16
  And in fact, with the problems that we had, we dropped back quite a bit, but we
• 22:19
  were coming back and, and other cars were having problems and we're getting, you
• 22:22
  know, up the leaderboard pretty quickly.
• 22:24
  At one point I heard.
• 22:26
  The lab speaker.
• 22:26
  Oh, the transmission problems for the Audi?
• 22:28
  Yes.
• 22:29
  Right.
• 22:29
  Okay.
• 22:30
  Like there's, there's one down and then, you know, a couple minutes
• 22:32
  later that's back on the track.
• 22:35
  Yeah.
• 22:35
  So that really kind of took some of the air out as well.
• 22:37
  Well, it blew everybody's mind.
• 22:39
  We all saw it live.
• 22:40
  We're like, what are they, did they just do what I think they did?
• 22:43
  Yeah, yeah.
• 22:44
  Yeah.
• 22:44
  That was, uh, pretty disappointing.
• 22:46
  If, if they weren't out of the race altogether, they're
• 22:48
  gonna be down for a while.
• 22:50
  In the rain.
• 22:50
  I know, I remember at least one of them when I was like
• 22:52
  walking to do one of my stints.
• 22:54
  I looked up at the tv, one of the cars was in the gravel, so I thought, okay,
• 22:58
  well at least it's gonna be, you know, a little bit before they can take 'em out.
• 23:01
  But the bloody marshals were super, uh, en enthused at that point, and,
• 23:06
  and they, they got the car out.
• 23:07
  Probably only lost like 30 seconds.
• 23:09
  With that, we didn't have, uh, as much luck as, as we needed to try
• 23:12
  to get back onto equal footing.
• 23:14
  So when you look back at this point to your previous runs at LE MANS, you're
• 23:18
  driving this, you know, we're put air quotes around British, but you
• 23:21
  know, German, DNA to prototype car.
• 23:24
  Was it a leap in a bound different, despite all its problems that it had?
• 23:28
  Did you enjoy driving some of the previous cars more, or was the Bentley
• 23:31
  at that point, like that was the car?
• 23:33
  Bentley was probably my favorite of all the cars that I drove there.
• 23:36
  Not, not just because of the success, but it was a really nicely balanced car.
• 23:40
  It did everything very well.
• 23:42
  There weren't really any bad habits.
• 23:43
  Just comparing to the other cars, like the Panos Roadster, number one was
• 23:47
  pretty slow, but also extremely hot.
• 23:49
  Extremely loud.
• 23:50
  I think most of my hearing exited between that year and then 99
• 23:54
  also with the Panos 'cause.
• 23:55
  'cause the cars were ex excruciatingly loud, you know?
• 23:58
  And in, in fact, in 97 we drivers James and Andy and I, we single stinted.
• 24:02
  And the main reason was just because of the noise was so bad, it felt like
• 24:06
  you were in a war zone or something.
• 24:08
  It was just like, it was, it was almost hard to, to concentrate.
• 24:10
  It was so loud.
• 24:11
  And then with the open top, Penos.
• 24:13
  This was definitely, you know, my fault, trying to be, you know,
• 24:16
  kind of a, an easygoing teammate.
• 24:17
  I didn't really get the cockpit to my liking, and I was stuck up a little
• 24:22
  bit in the Airstream and we, we tried to do some things with the windscreen
• 24:25
  to make it a little bit better, but that the other drivers didn't like it.
• 24:28
  So basically I had to put a pad on my head because my head was in
• 24:32
  the Airstream and, and on straits, it would just get pinned back.
• 24:35
  So I had to have a pad on it so I could just like at least rest it there.
• 24:38
  But if I started to look left or right, it would take my head like that, you
• 24:42
  know, and, and try to rip it off.
• 24:43
  So I just had to keep my head dead straight and just use my
• 24:46
  eyes whenever I was going left or right, which wasn't ideal.
• 24:49
  But the car was very good.
• 24:50
  It was, it was a little bit more brute force as opposed to, uh,
• 24:53
  at a time kind of on its own.
• 24:54
  You really had to drag it around the track, which David Bradham
• 24:57
  especially was extremely good at.
• 24:59
  And then the Cadillac just didn't really have the pace that we needed
• 25:02
  and also didn't have the downforce.
• 25:03
  So yeah, it just was never really that satisfying.
• 25:06
  But, so the Bentley was definitely of, of all those cars, the the best of them all.
• 25:10
  So 2002 is where it gets interesting because you've returned to Lamont yet
• 25:14
  again with Bentley, and it's the same team, and the same car, and the same
• 25:18
  drivers, and nearly the same result.
• 25:19
  But in the states, you double down and you're running
• 25:23
  TransAm, which is nothing like.
• 25:25
  The Bentley at the same time as campaigning this card,
• 25:29
  other racing that you're doing.
• 25:30
  Tell us a little bit more about this 2002 attempt.
• 25:33
  What was the goal going into it?
• 25:35
  Was it We did third last time We battled it out.
• 25:38
  You're suddenly on the podium now you wanna do it again.
• 25:40
  What was the ambition of the Bentley team going in for a second year?
• 25:44
  We were almost the victim of our own success.
• 25:46
  In 2001, things went a lot better than it was.
• 25:49
  It was expected to, you know, they kind of had their chart of
• 25:52
  expectations and you know, with ramping up with a win for the third year.
• 25:56
  But we had done well enough that they thought, well, do we really
• 25:59
  even need to do the second year?
• 26:02
  Because they wanted a complete redesign of the car.
• 26:04
  There wasn't enough time to do top to bottom redesign of the car.
• 26:08
  And it wasn't really until, yeah, I think it was at Daytona test in January that I
• 26:12
  finally got word that, okay, we're going.
• 26:14
  To Lamont, you know, which is only six months away from that.
• 26:17
  Yeah.
• 26:17
  So I, I went into 2002 with, well, actually really with Harley any work.
• 26:22
  'cause I, this was another point where, where Rob Dyson decided that, that,
• 26:25
  you know, he wasn't sure that he was gonna do a full season at that time it
• 26:28
  was, I guess Grand Dam or U-S-R-R-C, I can't remember what, what, what it was.
• 26:32
  But anyway, so he couldn't really commit to a full program.
• 26:35
  Bentley going into the year seemed about 50 50, whether they're going
• 26:38
  to be doing it, so I, I saw where Tom Glowy in the TransAm series had
• 26:42
  an opening for a driver, so I called him to see if he was available.
• 26:45
  Fortunately that worked out, and also he was agreeable to
• 26:48
  letting me go and test in France.
• 26:50
  And nothing fortunately collided on the schedule.
• 26:53
  So I was able to do a full commitment on both.
• 26:55
  But yeah, so when Bentley finally decided to do the program, it was
• 26:59
  with a mild update on the car.
• 27:02
  Uh, they, they really even said this to us was, it was really just as a way to
• 27:05
  kind of keep the team together and kind of keep learning the next year, which
• 27:09
  was meant to be the year that they won.
• 27:11
  And it was known at this time even that we were always a part of
• 27:14
  Volkswagen, you know, in the Audi group.
• 27:17
  So there was always some give and take.
• 27:19
  You know, we were running an Audi engine.
• 27:21
  In fact, our first test in 2001 was at a track called MOS in Czech Republic,
• 27:27
  and it went really well, and Audi was testing at the same time and we
• 27:30
  were actually matching their times.
• 27:32
  You know, we, we left that test thinking, wow, we've really
• 27:35
  got something serious here.
• 27:36
  Then we never went as fast again.
• 27:38
  And I won't explain too much what I mean by that, but you might be able to kind of
• 27:43
  draw, we'll call it balance of performance and put air quotes around that.
• 27:47
  The car never quite seemed to have the same snap that it
• 27:49
  did at that first test either.
• 27:50
  So the, the idea was, and you know, and the way they carried it out
• 27:53
  as well was for the third year.
• 27:55
  The Volkswagen kind of emphasis would go from Audi to Bentley, you know, and that's
• 28:00
  why there were no factory Audis run.
• 28:02
  The YO team came and ran one of the Bentleys and they basically brought
• 28:06
  quite a bit of the Audi drivers over as well to run the cars just 'cause it
• 28:09
  was, they became the primary program that foreshadows the 2003 season.
• 28:14
  So before we talk about your return to Lamont in 2003, you were there to see
• 28:18
  it unfold, but you weren't part of.
• 28:21
  The Bentley roster in 2003, and there's still arguments to this day.
• 28:25
  It even sits sideways sometimes with me when I think about it.
• 28:28
  The phrase is that Audi sort of gifted Bentley the win in 2003.
• 28:32
  What were your thoughts about Bentley's third and final in their program as you
• 28:37
  knew they were gonna do three years?
• 28:39
  You know.
• 28:39
  Okay.
• 28:39
  So they clinched it in that third year, but was it really theirs?
• 28:43
  Let's sort of settle the debate, I suppose.
• 28:45
  The Volkswagen group definitely.
• 28:47
  You know, the favored mark for that year was Bentley for sure.
• 28:50
  But having said that, the car that Peter Ellery penned for
• 28:53
  that year was a brilliant car.
• 28:54
  It was a beautiful car, just like, you know, being outside the
• 28:57
  program at that point, but watching it, it looked really impressive.
• 29:01
  And they went to Michelin tires, which was an improvement.
• 29:03
  Yeah.
• 29:04
  And then the competition, you know, it, it went all to private tier Audis.
• 29:07
  I'm not sure if I remember right, but I think maybe the balance of performance
• 29:10
  had been shifted a bit as well, where the Audis got a little bit of a haircut
• 29:14
  on their restrictor as well, so there was definitely a favored sun there.
• 29:18
  They also executed really well, you know, and, and by having Ghost Run one car and
• 29:23
  Richard Lloyd's team run the other car.
• 29:25
  There was still competition between the two.
• 29:27
  It wasn't even like two cars just going around in formation for the entire race.
• 29:31
  You know, you, you had rivalries.
• 29:32
  British group over here and the German group over here.
• 29:34
  So there were definitely both sides really trying to push their own side through.
• 29:38
  You know, I, I don't think they, they weren't necessarily gifted
• 29:40
  anything, but there was definitely most favorable situation of
• 29:44
  the three years that they had.
• 29:45
  Do you feel like you missed out not being one of the drivers selected, or was
• 29:49
  there a reason to go to Ferrari instead?
• 29:51
  Well, no, I went to Ferrari just because.
• 29:54
  I didn't have anything else, you know, that I also was very happy to
• 29:57
  get a ride with the GT team, but I would've loved, and I, you know, I,
• 30:00
  I pleaded my case as much as I could, but they were pretty set that they
• 30:03
  wanted a more or less British car guy.
• 30:06
  And David, and, well, no, actually David was in the other car, but it was
• 30:09
  obvious that they were gonna be bringing some of the Audi drivers over as well.
• 30:12
  And, you know, I, I can't really blame them 'cause they were fantastic drivers.
• 30:15
  And if this is the one year that you have to win LE MANSn.
• 30:18
  I can certainly see their argument that you want to have people that
• 30:21
  have won Lamont before, so I didn't take it too hard, but Got it.
• 30:24
  Would've been great.
• 30:25
  And we've heard from other legends that have been on the show, whether it
• 30:28
  was, you know, David Murray or it was Adrian Fernandez that have made the
• 30:32
  transition from l and p down to the production classes versus somebody like
• 30:36
  Andy Pilgrim who's super comfortable, you know, behind the wheel of a
• 30:39
  Corvette versus going the other way.
• 30:41
  What I've heard as a kind of a consensus from those drivers that it wasn't like
• 30:46
  it was a step down, it was different.
• 30:48
  And we talked about how much time they spent being maybe more situationally
• 30:52
  aware, driving in their mirrors.
• 30:55
  It's just a whole different atmosphere because of the speed differential.
• 30:58
  So when you step down from LM one, let's.
• 31:01
  Say down into the production classes with the Ferrari, did you have
• 31:05
  the same experience where suddenly you're like, man, I'm not used to
• 31:08
  all these cars ganging up on me.
• 31:10
  And like you said, you're one of the, the Jamer cars, right?
• 31:13
  You know, out on track.
• 31:14
  Was it like that for you?
• 31:15
  Not really.
• 31:16
  I grew up doing GT racings.
• 31:18
  I'd spent quite a bit of time in that role before I went to prototypes, so
• 31:22
  it wasn't completely foreign to me.
• 31:23
  But having said that, driving high horsepower cars, high downforce cars
• 31:27
  can also maybe make you a little bit.
• 31:29
  Lazy, exploiting like everything that they have and, you know, maybe not using all
• 31:33
  momentum that you have because you've got 700 horsepower to dig you out of the turn.
• 31:37
  Now all of a sudden when you've got 400 horsepower little tires and, and no down
• 31:41
  force, it becomes much more critical to be really tidy with everything.
• 31:45
  And so, like that was probably the biggest challenge was, you know, being
• 31:48
  inch perfect everywhere and not kind of like trying to drag a time out
• 31:51
  of it, but kind of like really like letting the car, uh, do what it wants.
• 31:54
  Had you driven a Ferrari before this point?
• 31:57
  And the reason I bring it up is to compare it to coming off of
• 32:00
  a TransAm season in a Corvette.
• 32:02
  What was that like?
• 32:03
  Yeah, there was like nothing similar between the two.
• 32:06
  It, that was the only time I drove a Ferrari, even since I think
• 32:08
  actually, but it was very different.
• 32:10
  The setup on the car was very soft as opposed to what I was maybe
• 32:14
  more used to with prototypes.
• 32:16
  It took a lot of getting used to.
• 32:17
  Yeah, and I, and I honestly, I wasn't the fastest driver on the team
• 32:20
  either, because I, I kind of coming into it a little bit cold like that.
• 32:23
  But even so, we were actually, we were, we were doing really well.
• 32:26
  There's a problem with the Porsches that year.
• 32:28
  I think they had a fuel problem or something like that, or
• 32:30
  maybe a fuel pump problem.
• 32:31
  We found ourselves leading into the night at some point, a way
• 32:34
  that we, that we were leading.
• 32:35
  But then we, we had an engine blow.
• 32:37
  Someone came when I was sleeping in the, in the, you know, little cubicle
• 32:41
  inform me that engine was blown up.
• 32:42
  So we, we did only lasted probably less than 10 hours in that one.
• 32:45
  But it was, it was, it was good to go back there and have a perspective
• 32:48
  from the gt 'cause all the others were being in the top class.
• 32:51
  So, yeah, it, it was.
• 32:52
  An interesting way to do it.
• 32:53
  Six attempts at LeMans, tons of challenges, weather
• 32:57
  conditions, changing teams.
• 32:59
  So many things that you've been probably thinking about in preparation for this.
• 33:03
  And we like to ask the legends that come on the show, when you take
• 33:07
  all that into consideration, when you look at it now, maybe with rose
• 33:10
  colored glasses in some respects.
• 33:11
  Your Lamont's journey is longer than a lot of other drivers.
• 33:15
  You know, some people, it's one and done, you know, and then you've
• 33:17
  got others that have done it, you know, a dozen times and so on.
• 33:19
  But when you look back over those six attempts, what do
• 33:22
  you think Lamont's taught you?
• 33:24
  Did it make you a better driver when you went into your other series?
• 33:27
  I think so, yeah.
• 33:28
  Well, I suppose the biggest thing is just being able to kind of.
• 33:31
  Handle the pressure of such a big event, especially on the Bentley
• 33:34
  side where, you know, there was an enormous amount of resources that
• 33:38
  were put behind this one team.
• 33:39
  There was only one race, you know, so the stress and, and the pressure
• 33:43
  get builds up every day, every day, you know, leading up to the race.
• 33:46
  And then the actual weekend itself, it gets pretty crazy, you know, all of
• 33:49
  the PR people freaking out, you know, just as much as everyone's feeling
• 33:53
  the pressure and kind of showing it.
• 33:55
  So I, I think one of the biggest things is just being able to absorb that much
• 34:00
  pressure and go out and, you know, and, and do what you're, you're supposed to do.
• 34:04
  And then the other part, like we talked about earlier, was just
• 34:06
  because at Lamont you don't have traffic so much to deal with.
• 34:10
  There's a much higher emphasis on lap times.
• 34:13
  Throughout all 24 hours as opposed to survival, having to shift the
• 34:17
  whole attitude from just having a car together to race the last few hours.
• 34:21
  Where at?
• 34:22
  At Lamont, you're really from the beginning of the race, just going as
• 34:24
  hard as you can and just hoping and, and assuming that the car is going to put up
• 34:28
  with it, and if not, as the car's fault, the driver at Lamont isn't meant to really
• 34:33
  take care of the car so much as to just extract every bit of speed out of it.
• 34:37
  So even before the first time you went to LE MANS as the tire guy in
• 34:41
  1994, you mentioned that you had always wanted to race at LE MANS.
• 34:46
  And I've interviewed plenty of other up and coming drivers
• 34:49
  that say the same thing.
• 34:50
  LE MANS is one of the crown jewels, part of the triple crown of
• 34:52
  Motorsport for that matter.
• 34:54
  And they wanted race at LE MANS and they haven't been able to get there yet.
• 34:58
  Having been there six times yourself, what advice would you give based
• 35:02
  on all your experiences to these up and coming drivers that wanna
• 35:05
  go to LE MANS first would be I. Do it.
• 35:08
  You know, like what, whatever you can, like, put a lot of effort
• 35:10
  into defining it, whatever path you can do to, to get there.
• 35:14
  Whether that means having success in prototype or GT racing, you know,
• 35:18
  like in in the, in IMSA here or in, you know, in the European series.
• 35:22
  And find out who's going.
• 35:24
  Like the way I got the Ferrari drive was just looking at the entry list and seeing
• 35:27
  which cars didn't have a third driver.
• 35:30
  And then starting to make phone calls, I'm sure it's not quite
• 35:33
  as, as simple as that anymore.
• 35:35
  I think deals are done, I think much earlier maybe than, than they used to be.
• 35:39
  This was probably, I wanna say maybe in March or so, maybe April,
• 35:43
  even when, when I made the deal for the Ferrari, so it was quite late.
• 35:46
  Whereas now it seems like all the teams, when when the entries announced.
• 35:49
  Four or five months ahead of time, like they've already
• 35:51
  got all their drivers set up.
• 35:53
  But the biggest thing with racing is really relationships.
• 35:55
  You know, as I said, how, how I got into it with having a relationship with
• 35:57
  James and Andy and then David Price, and just kind of knowing people so
• 36:01
  that whenever your name does come up, it can click and it can say, oh, okay,
• 36:05
  well yeah, actually that makes sense.
• 36:07
  As opposed to whenever they have to say, you know, who is that?
• 36:10
  That doesn't help.
• 36:10
  Whatever you can do to get your name out there, whatever success you can
• 36:14
  get, I think helps in being chosen for a drive at Lamont because everyone
• 36:18
  is very selective because it is, I mean, a huge event, but also a huge
• 36:22
  expense for whatever team is doing it.
• 36:24
  I don't imagine that it's changed a lot, but I, I know that, like Rob Dyson used to
• 36:27
  say that when he was looking at possibly entering them on the budget for doing.
• 36:31
  The one race was the same as doing an entire year, and no one's going to
• 36:35
  make just kind of an offhand choice.
• 36:37
  Every choice is going to be very thought out, so you know, you need
• 36:41
  to make your case as strong as you possibly can to get the opportunity
• 36:44
  watching Rolex watching LE MANS or even the 24 hours of the Berg ring.
• 36:49
  It's a lot to swallow for some people.
• 36:51
  There's some diehards, like in the A-C-O-U-S-A, we try to stay
• 36:54
  up as long as we can to watch the race and watch you guys compete.
• 36:57
  You got a lot of folks out there that are coming into Motorsport by
• 37:00
  way of things like Drive to Survive and Formula One and other channels
• 37:03
  and disciplines of Motorsport.
• 37:05
  So if somebody asked you, Butch, I heard, should you raced at Lamont?
• 37:07
  You know, I don't know if I can stomach watching this type of racing.
• 37:10
  What would you say to them to get them excited to watch something like the 24?
• 37:14
  You know, I've been to Lamont a couple times since with Michelin, where Michelin
• 37:18
  rewards some of their best dealers with a, a trip to France and with their spouse
• 37:23
  and, and they've taken the, the event and no one ever comes away from that.
• 37:27
  Disappointed.
• 37:28
  It's amazing.
• 37:29
  There's, there's nothing like seeing cars go that speed at night.
• 37:34
  I mean, just like visually the, the sensory overload as the cars burst through
• 37:39
  the darkness and come screaming past you and just all of your senses are just so
• 37:42
  completely attuned to, you know, and being assaulted really as the car goes by you.
• 37:46
  It's something very special.
• 37:48
  And if you ever get any chance to go to Lamont to visit
• 37:51
  Lamont, definitely take it.
• 37:52
  If you can do it with a package, it's even better, you know, if it's some kind of
• 37:55
  group or you can get tours and get, get behind the scenes, it's so much better.
• 38:00
  But yeah, it, it's an event.
• 38:01
  You know, it's, it's like, you know, I've been to like the Preakness
• 38:03
  horse race and like Indy 500.
• 38:06
  Even just standing there, you know, in the grandstands or in the infield of
• 38:09
  the Preakness, the buzz of the people.
• 38:12
  There's like electricity in the air.
• 38:13
  You really feel like you're at an event.
• 38:15
  You know, it's not just like going to a sporting event.
• 38:18
  It's going to, it's really significant event where I think
• 38:22
  what they have like 200,000 people are there, you know, watching it.
• 38:25
  You really feel like you're a part of something.
• 38:26
  Anyone who goes there will not come back Disappointed.
• 38:29
  I'm glad you opened the door to talk about being part of
• 38:31
  something as we wrap up here.
• 38:33
  So, if you could transport Butch from the past to the current season, you
• 38:38
  know, the last couple years of cars, is there anything you would drive
• 38:41
  that's out there on the track now?
• 38:42
  I wouldn't drive it very well, probably.
• 38:44
  I definitely try to maybe not let anyone know it was me, 'cause
• 38:48
  I'd probably embarrassed myself.
• 38:49
  But I am very interested though in, in the modern prototypes and
• 38:52
  the hybrid systems and, and just.
• 38:54
  Everything that goes into it.
• 38:55
  And honestly, like, you know, I, I try to watch some of the racing on tv and I've
• 38:58
  never really seen very good explanations on what are the drivers doing, what
• 39:02
  are the teams telling 'em to do?
• 39:03
  Like how much is automatic, but how are they balancing the, like
• 39:06
  all these different systems.
• 39:07
  I'm very curious on the technical side, how all that works together and how much
• 39:10
  the driver is actually doing with it.
• 39:12
  You know, I have seen the cars though, and they're incredibly impressive.
• 39:15
  With the hybrid system and the, the ice engines, they absolutely
• 39:19
  just explode off the line.
• 39:20
  Coming out of a, a slow turn, the acceleration is just mind blowing.
• 39:25
  Yeah, that, that would be probably the thing that I would like the most is just
• 39:27
  to be able to feel the acceleration that the modern cars have this year, next year,
• 39:31
  and next couple seasons are gonna be a big to-do because Aston Martin is back.
• 39:35
  Ford has announced that they're coming back to L-M-P-G-T-P.
• 39:38
  Do you think Bentley's gonna make a return in the future?
• 39:41
  What are your thoughts on that?
• 39:42
  Obviously they don't have any inside knowledge, but I do know that they looked
• 39:45
  at LMP two, can't remember how many years ago, but I wanna say like maybe six years
• 39:49
  ago, five years ago, before Covid anyway.
• 39:52
  And at the time it seemed kind of odd to me, but I think they probably
• 39:54
  knew at the time that basically the prototypes were kind of going
• 39:57
  towards LMP two kind of size and then with with the hybrids and all that.
• 40:01
  So I wouldn't put it past them.
• 40:02
  I know the Volkswagen board is keen to keep Bentley.
• 40:05
  Known as a performance brand.
• 40:08
  That was the reason that we went in the first place was that when
• 40:10
  Volkswagen purchased Bentley at the time, they morphed into like, it's
• 40:15
  kind of Rolls Royce, but not really.
• 40:17
  They had a hard time kind of saying what they really stood for, I think.
• 40:19
  And Volkswagen Group came in and, and said, we need to
• 40:22
  reestablish what Bentley is.
• 40:24
  And you know, I think it worked really well.
• 40:25
  I think when you see a Bentley actually has some basis for the performance
• 40:30
  behind it, you know, like it actually has history, you know, so, and it's
• 40:33
  not only ancient history, it's also.
• 40:35
  Modern history.
• 40:36
  So yeah, I, I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, every few years, maybe
• 40:39
  every 10 years or something like that, they decide that they need to
• 40:41
  kind of freshen that up and go back.
• 40:42
  I hope they do 'cause it is great.
• 40:44
  One of the coolest things when I was with Bentley is we did some factory
• 40:47
  visits and it was just great to go to crew, these old brick buildings.
• 40:51
  I. And where they built spitfire engines during the war and, but
• 40:54
  they actually to see like the way that they're assembling these cars,
• 40:57
  like seeing the wood be cut for the dashes and, and the leather selected.
• 41:01
  It was cool to see cars still made by people's hands.
• 41:04
  If the Volkswagen group can justify it.
• 41:05
  I'm sure that there's still people at Bentley that want to go back to Lamont.
• 41:09
  This year's also a big year for Lamont because it's going to be
• 41:12
  the 12th running of the classic.
• 41:14
  It's been a while since the classic.
• 41:15
  So if you got an invite to go run one of your previous Lamont's
• 41:19
  entries, would you do it?
• 41:20
  Oh, absolutely, yes.
• 41:21
  I'm doing some of that now on stateside where a gentleman named
• 41:23
  Juan Gonzalez has actually one of the Cadillac more modern is 2017
• 41:27
  Cadillacs that he and I drive over here.
• 41:29
  We, we just did the Sebring Classic.
• 41:31
  It's a great way just to go out and have some fun behind the
• 41:34
  wheel and no, no pressure just to enjoy reliving some glory days.
• 41:37
  No, absolutely.
• 41:39
  If there's any chance to get back to them all, I'll definitely take it.
• 41:42
  I'm glad to see that you're still out there racing butch, and I think you
• 41:44
  need to update your business card.
• 41:45
  Just say Butch inger to LeMans and beyond.
• 41:50
  Sounds good.
• 41:51
  Well, as we wrap this out, I wanna pass the torch to our A CO Ambassador
• 41:56
  Mai Lee for some closing thoughts.
• 41:58
  Thanks a lot, Butch, for your time here and sharing your wisdom and your stories.
• 42:02
  It's been very enlightening and very enjoyable, and thanks again to Eric for
• 42:06
  the excellent hosting for the event.
• 42:08
  Thanks to all the a CO members who've dialed in.
• 42:10
  Have a great rest of your evening.
• 42:12
  Thank you very much and on behalf of everyone here and those
• 42:15
  listening at home, thank you Butch for sharing your stories with us.
• 42:18
  We took a deep dive into the incredible journey of Butch Litzinger and his six
• 42:22
  attempts at conquering the 24 hours of LE MANS from his near victory with
• 42:26
  Bentley in 2001, to the challenges and triumphs that defined his career.
• 42:29
  Butch's story is one of perseverance, passion and
• 42:33
  resilience in the face of adversity.
• 42:35
  A special thanks to Butch for sharing his experience with us and
• 42:37
  giving us a closer look at what it truly takes to race at Lamont's.
• 42:41
  His podium finish in 2001 will forever be remembered as one of the most
• 42:45
  remarkable moments in endurance racing.
• 42:47
  We hope you enjoyed this presentation and look forward to more evening
• 42:50
  with a legend throughout the season.
• 42:52
  And with that Butch, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show,
• 42:54
  sharing your stories with us.
• 42:55
  And I have to say, it feels really odd to say this, but I grew up
• 42:59
  watching you race and it's been an absolute honor to sit down and listen
• 43:03
  to you and talk about your stories.
• 43:04
  So thank you for sharing.
• 43:05
  It was very kind of you.
• 43:06
  I appreciate that, Eric.
• 43:07
  I had a great time.
• 43:08
  Uh uh, thanks.
• 43:08
  I'm happy to do it at any time and keep turning laps.
• 43:11
  Right on.
• 43:23
  This episode has been brought to you by the Automobile Club of the West and
• 43:27
  the A-C-O-U-S-A from the awe-inspiring speed demons that have graced the
• 43:31
  track to the courageous drivers who have pushed the limits of endurance.
• 43:35
  The 24 hours of the LE MANS is an automotive spectacle like no other
• 43:38
  For over a century, the 24 hours LE MANS has urged manufacturers to innovate
• 43:42
  for the benefit of future motorists.
• 43:44
  It's a celebration of the relentless pursuit of speed and excellence
• 43:48
  in the world of motorsports.
• 43:49
  To learn more about or to become a member of the A-C-O-U-S-A look no further than
• 43:54
  www do LE MANSn org, click on English in the upper right corner and then click
• 43:59
  on the ACO members tab for club offers.
• 44:03
  Once you've become a member, you can follow all the action on the Facebook
• 44:06
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• 44:11
  Evening with the legend meetups.
• 44:22
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• 44:26
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• 44:28
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• 44:52
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