It's Not the Car The Drama of Your First Le Mans — w/ Baptiste Viala
Debrief alert! INTC co-host Jeff Braun helped run a GT3 Corvette at the 24 Hours of Le Mans this year. To a top-ten finish!
In his day job, Jeff is comp director for an IMSA team. Baptiste Viala is a 25-year-old engineer who works with him. June marked Jeff's sixth time running a car at Le Mans and Baptiste's first.
Two cool cats. And they have surprisingly different angles on the same trip to France.
This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. We call this format “The Rookie and the Vet.”
(For the record, we almost called this episode “Both Sides Now,” a’la Joni Mitchell. That got nixed quick, though, because Sam totally would have sung that song on air, guaranteed, like a dying cat, okay, and no one needs that sort of thing from him, ever.)
RELATED TRIVIA: The thing is… I *have* seen La Sarthe from both sides now? From pits to stands, and still, somehow: It’s mostly crêpes that I recall. Perhaps I don’t know crêpes at all? Tears and fears and feeling proud! To say “I crêpe you,” right out loud! Dreams and schemes and podium crowds—sure, I’ve loved Le Mans that way. But also, there is in the vendor area occasionally a food truck that will sell you a fresh crêpe at six in the morning, and that sucker is tasty enough to rip your face off.
(Mitchell is a good Le Mans vibe, incidentally. Who knew? Hang on the fence at Tertre Rouge sometime, cue up "California.” Excellent.)
This episode was produced by Mike Perlman.
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ABOUT THE SHOW:
It’s Not the Car is a podcast about people and speed. We tell racing stories and leave out the boring parts.
Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver, a bestselling author, and a world-renowned performance coach. Jeff Braun is a champion race engineer. Sam Smith is an award-winning writer and a former executive editor of Road & Track magazine.
We don’t love racing for the nuts and bolts—we love it for what it asks of the meatbag at the wheel.
New episodes every Tuesday.