Le Mans is a super famous race where cars run for 24 hours straight. It’s more about endurance and strategy—tires, fuel, and not breaking—than just one fast lap.
A stint is how long one driver drives before switching to another driver. In long races, teams plan stints so the car and drivers stay in the best shape.
A chicane is a part of the track where you have to make quick, alternating turns to slow down. It’s also a common place to try passing because braking and turning are critical.
These are cameras inside the race car that send video to the team while the race is happening. It lets the crew see what the driver sees so they can judge damage and plan the next move.
This is the computer system that keeps track of the race timing—like lap times and where each car is. Teams use it to know exactly what’s happening on track.
A puncture means the tire got damaged and starts losing air. In a race, that can quickly make the car unsafe and slow, so the team watches for it right away.
A pit stop is when the race car pulls into the pit lane so the team can work on it. In endurance racing, doing it early costs time, so teams try to avoid unnecessary stops.
GM is General Motors, the company that makes Chevrolet. They’re talking about GM engineers helping the Corvette team with the car’s engine and drivetrain systems.
A can bus is the car’s internal “data network” that connects sensors and computers. If the scrutineering can bus is lost, it can mean the race officials can’t read the car’s required electronic data, which is a big problem in competition.
ACO is the organization behind Le Mans. They use official monitoring systems to make sure teams follow the rules during the race.
Company
IMSO
IMSA is a big racing organization that runs endurance racing series. They help set the rules and oversee how teams comply, including using data from the cars.
Balance of Performance is how race organizers try to make different cars compete more evenly. They use rule limits and measurements so no one car is too strong.
Restrictors are like a choke point that limits how much air (and therefore power) an engine can use. Organizers used them to keep cars from being too fast compared to others.
These sensors measure how much twisting force the car’s drive system is putting down. Officials can then tell if the car is exceeding the allowed limit.
A black flag is an official warning that something is wrong with your car or your driving. It usually means you need to come in and deal with the problem right away.
A 60-second penalty is basically a punishment measured in time. You have to stop for a full minute (or your race time gets adjusted) because of a rules issue.
It’s a small electronic box on the race car that helps the track measure your driving. As the car passes over sensors in the road, it records things like lap time and split times so officials can track results.
A track is divided into sections, and the timing system measures how long you take through each section. That way you can tell which part of the lap is fast or slow.
Here, “network” means the car’s electronic communication system—how the computer and sensors talk to each other. If wiring gets damaged, the car may lose signals and stop working correctly.
The rocker panel is the metal piece along the bottom side of the car, running under the doors. If it gets damaged, it’s a big job to replace because you often have to take off parts of the interior/floor to get to it.
Concept
race lap
A race lap means the car drives all the way around the track once. In long races, teams look at lap times to see how fast the car is and how consistently it can do that.
In this context, 'gas' means refueling during a pit stop. They add fuel so the car can keep running for the next part of the race.
Topic
making up laps in endurance racing
In long races, whether you can “catch up” depends on how cautions work and how lapped cars are handled. This segment compares two rule sets and shows why one makes lap recovery much harder.
“Pass arounds” are situations where faster cars can get around slower, lapped cars in a controlled, rules-based way. It helps prevent the race from getting stuck behind traffic.
Term
final wave buys
Final wave buys are a race procedure that lets teams use a planned caution/strategy moment to pit and get back into the race. The rules are set up so more cars can end up on the lead lap.
A full course yellow is when the race is slowed down everywhere on the track for safety. Everyone has to drive carefully and keep their distance until the race restarts.
A virtual safety car is like a caution period where cars slow down, but there isn’t a real safety car driving around. Drivers keep their spacing until the race goes back to normal.
A tire set means a full set of tires the team uses together. In long races, tires wear out, so teams count how many sets they’ll need to plan speed and pit stops.
Term
million dollar race car
This phrase highlights that the car is an expensive purpose-built endurance prototype or race-spec machine. At that cost, teams treat testing and extra track time as a major risk because crashes, mechanical failures, and wear can be extremely costly.
Car setup is how the team adjusts the car to match the track. It can include suspension and tire settings so the car handles better and the tires last longer.
BOP is a set of race rules meant to keep different cars on a more even playing field. It can change things like how heavy the car is or how much power it’s allowed to make.
Scrutineering is the pre-race inspection by officials to make sure the car is legal and safe. Think of it like a technical check before the race starts.
Race control is like the official command center for the race. It watches what’s happening and tells teams what to do, and teams message them during the event.
Teams use a real-time messaging system to talk to race officials while the race is running. It helps them coordinate fast decisions without waiting around.
“Retiring the car” means the team stops the car from continuing in the race. They do it officially through race officials, then the car is taken out of action.
In races like Le Mans, officials can punish drivers for breaking rules. That punishment is usually added as extra time or a position change, and here they’re debating whether this bump should have led to one.
Term
error in judgment
This is basically saying the driver made the wrong call, not that they just messed up a braking point. In other words, they chose to take a risky move when it wasn’t worth it.
Braking is how the driver slows down before turning. The host is saying this wasn’t just a timing mistake with braking—it was more about whether the move made sense.
Aragon is a race track in Spain where teams can practice safely. They went there for a couple of days to prepare for Le Mans, including learning how their tires behave.
Goodyear tire refers to the specific tire brand used for the test and, by implication, the tire behavior the team needs to learn. Tire choice strongly affects grip, wear, and how the car responds during acceleration, braking, and cornering—so teams test to understand the tires’ limits and timing.
A “proper test” means they set things up like a real race as much as possible. They brought the full team and their actual car so they could learn what would matter on race day.
“Setup wise” means the car’s settings—things the team adjusts to change how it drives. During testing, they try different settings to figure out what will work best for the big race they’re preparing for.
A two-day test is extra track time before the race where the team tries things and learns what works. It helps them feel more prepared because they can practice procedures and dial in the car instead of guessing.
“Unloaded” here means getting the car ready to run on track after bringing it in. It’s part of the team’s logistics and preparation so they can start testing or racing with a clear plan.
Concept
plugged those holes
This phrase means they found what didn’t work last year and fixed it. The goal is to remove the problem areas so the team feels more confident during the race.
This is about switching roles—after working on the race, the guys go watch it like regular fans. It’s part of the “we quit” feeling the episode is describing.
The Dunlop Curve is a specific turn at the Le Mans race track. It’s named for the sponsor Dunlop and it’s the kind of corner you can watch from the stands.
Mossport is an older name for a well-known Canadian race track. The point is that people keep using the familiar name even after it changes.
Place
Goodyear presents the Dunlop Memorial Bridge
This is about sponsor naming. Even though Goodyear is sponsoring it, people still want the bridge to keep the Dunlop Memorial name because it feels more “right” to them.
Watkins Glen is a well-known race track in the U.S. that endurance races use. When people talk about “Watkins Glen” in this context, they usually mean a long multi-hour race where teams plan driver changes and tire usage.
In long races, teams switch drivers partway through. This helps drivers stay fresh and keeps the car performing well, usually during pit stops.
Term
Mission tires
“Mission tires” sounds like the specific tires the race uses. In endurance racing, teams have to plan how many tire sets they can use because tires wear out and affect how fast the car can go.
Term
quad-standing
“Quad-standing” sounds like a way teams set up their cars in the pit area. The point is organization—how many cars/positions they’re using—rather than changing the car itself.
“Homologated” means the race officials have checked and approved the car or parts so they’re allowed under the rules. If it’s not homologated, you might be disqualified or forced to change it.
A “homologation variation” is an approved change to a homologated car or component—typically a specific modification that the rules allow once it’s been submitted and accepted. In practice, teams use these variations to make updates after issues while staying within the governing body’s approval process.
Pratt & Miller is a racing engineering company that helps teams build and update race cars. Here, they’re helping get permission for a change so the car stays legal to race.
“Qualified last” means they were the slowest in qualifying and will start from the back of the starting lineup. It’s a tough spot, but endurance races can still be won with the right strategy and execution.
Daytona is a famous race track in the U.S. where big endurance races happen. They’re saying that the last time they were at the back for a long race, they still ended up winning.
A 24-hour race is a long event where the car has to keep going for an entire day. Drivers rotate and the team makes pit stops, and the goal is to finish while keeping the car healthy.
“On the lead lap” means your car is still in the same lap count as the front of the race. If you fall behind by a lap or more, it’s usually much harder to catch back up.
In endurance racing, the pit lane has specific spots for each team. A pit box is that team’s designated parking/work area when the car comes in for service.
The pit lane is the area next to the track where race cars pull in for service. Teams use it during the race, and there are strict rules about when they can enter and work.
“Dialed in” just means they got it working really well—like they fine-tuned the plan so it performed the way they wanted.
LIVE
not last in our class, like last 12 more sets of tires
at $4,000 a set.
We're going to risk this million dollar race car
going 180 miles an hour, like five times on a lap.
You're really slowing out of it.
Well, all right, we kind of put it out of its misery,
but no, we were fast.
Man, that change I made on that spreadsheet.
What was your favorite thing about Le Mans 2026?
What was cell D 56?
That one right there.
That guy right here.
OK, welcome to It's Not the Car.
My name is Sam Smith.
I'm a club racer and a reformed motorsport journalist.
This is a show about racing and the people
we are under pressure.
It's also a podcast about what happens when things go wrong
and sometimes how they go wrong in a way that
sticks around for a minute.
We're taping this show a handful of days
after the 2026 running of the 24 hours of Le Mans.
Jeff is the competition director for a pro sports car
team in IMSA, a Chevy Corvette in GTT.
We've talked about this team before,
not just because they're great people and friends,
but also because their stories say a lot about how racing works
when you're not standing on the podium every weekend,
but you care about it and you're there for the right reasons.
The team is out of Toronto.
It's called 13 Autosport.
Last year, they won the 24 hours of Daytona.
They also went to Le Mans where they ended up finishing 10th,
like this great result that was completely unexpected.
This year, the team went back to Le Mans
and unfortunately, it didn't go well.
They qualified last and they finished last.
And as Jeff told me before we started taping,
he said we were better prepared,
we did a better job as a team and we finished worse.
So with that in mind, I asked Jeff if we could use this episode
to talk about the pain of all this,
what went wrong, what they learned, the difficult bits,
and because Jeff is Jeff, he was totally for it.
I mean, at least that's what you said a few minutes ago.
Are you still game?
I am. I think you've learned,
when everything goes the way you expected and you win,
you probably will learn less than when things go sideways
and you don't do well and you spend the next 364 days
thinking about what you can do better next time.
Ross and I were taping a live show.
We were in Michigan at a Porsche Club of America
Drivers Education event at a racetrack.
So we only started to catch up afterward once we got home.
I mean, at this point, all I know about what happened
to you guys is that there was contact a couple hours in
and the car was in the garage for a bit
and then you retired the car.
What went down? What happened?
We were there for, well, some of the guys were there
for 14 days and so that part that you described
seems like a blip on the radar.
I was like, yep, that happened,
but so much more happened leading up to that.
It's a huge event.
There's a lot of practice and all of that kind of stuff.
But I suppose we can do one of those movie things
where we can explain what happened and then back up
and maybe try to figure out why that happened.
Okay, so the end result was we finished last,
like not last in our class, like last.
There are 64 cars listed on the finishing order
and we are the last ones, which kind of sucks.
But, so here's how we got there.
To say the least, yeah.
So we're fading into the movie at the key point.
Ori's done three and a half stints.
Our plan was- This is Ori Fadani.
Ori Fadani, team owner, $13 for team owner and driver.
Our bronze driver, we started him in the race
and the plan was for him to do four stints.
A stint at Le Mans is only about 40 minutes.
We're an insistence about an hour
because we have different energy requirements.
So four stints is doable at Le Mans.
It's not a physical track,
but a lot of people do four stints.
Some people do five stints.
So he was into his fourth stint
and there was a guy who he was racing pretty intently
and he had passed the guy.
We had a little bit better straight line speed
and he would draft by the guy
and then the guy would try to pass him back in the corners.
And anyway, they going into the second chicane,
which is the left-hander.
They, Ori passes them on the left-hand side,
goes, turns left into the chicane
and this guy tries to drive around the outside of them
in the chicane.
Well, you have to turn quickly back to the right
to make the corner.
So the guys at Ori's right rear, Ori turns right,
this guy's still staying there
instead of back out of it like most people do.
Then he hits the curb and slides into Ori,
hits him in the right-hand side.
And it was a bump, none of them spun out,
none of them went off the track.
We have in-car, many of the cars at Le Mans
have live in-car cameras.
We were one of them that had that.
And so I have a screen right in front of my
timing and scoring computer and my strategy computer
that I can watch Ori's view all the way around the racetrack.
And so I'm watching what happened all of a sudden.
I see the bump and I see Ori wiggle a little bit
and he gets back going and he comes out onto the straightaway
five seconds later and says immediately,
cause he knows we can see what's happening.
And he says immediately, cars fine, everything feels good.
Steering straight, watch the tire pressures
because he doesn't know if we got like a puncture
from getting hit or whatever.
So Baptiste, our data engineer who we've had on the show,
he's monitoring tire pressures.
Charlie, who we've also had on the show with engineer,
he's monitoring tire pressures.
They all give me the thumbs up.
Looks good going down mouse on, everything's great.
And we're like, okay, little bump, nothing, no big deal.
Continue on, don't have to make a pit stop early
because the car seems good, all the systems are good.
And all of a sudden, I can't remember if it was Ethan,
our GM systems engineer.
We have a GM powertrain systems guy embedded
with each Corvette, the guys who build the motors and stuff.
Can't remember who it was, Ethan or Baptiste,
but somebody said, we've lost the scrutineering can bus.
Yeah, and I'm like, I'm not an electronics guy
and those guys are really geeky on that stuff,
but I know enough to know what that is, that's really bad.
So a can bus is a, think of it as a network
that has a bunch of sensors plugged into it.
So think of like an ethernet system in your house
where you have your printer and your computer
and your whatever else, maybe your thermostat
all plugged into this network.
And there's multiple can networks inside the race car.
One of them is a scrutineering network,
which is the organizers, IMSO or in this case, the ACO
require us to send back information about the car
to them via telemetry live
so that they can monitor our performance.
Back in the old days for balance of performance,
we used to have restrictors and things like that
would monitor the power.
Now we have torque sensors on the axles
and they don't care how we make the power,
they just care how much we make.
What's getting down, yeah.
Right, so we have a torque limit that we're allowed to use.
And if we exceed that torque limit, we get a penalty.
Well, the ACO, the organizers monitor that,
they're getting that signal back 100 times a second,
very fast data, they're looking at that.
And if we exceed their limit, it'll flag it
and we'll get a warning or a penalty
depending on how bad it is.
So they need that information.
The same thing with tire pressures.
There's minimum tire pressures that we're allowed to run.
And if we're under those minimums for too long,
we get a penalty.
But the ACO has to have all that information live
to be able to judge it.
And if you lose that information,
you have to stop and fix it.
Well, so the scrutinering CAN bus, the network, went down.
The ACO is not getting any data anymore.
And we know that's illegal to run that way.
We don't know if we're gonna get a black flag
in eight seconds or eight laps, but it's common.
We know that.
So we were, I think about two laps from already pitting
and we're decided that rather than draw a penalty,
because we didn't know if it was gonna be stop and fix it
or stop and get a 60 second penalty
because you could have been running illegally
during that time, we didn't know.
So we pitted, got Ori in the garage,
and the guys, electronic guys did some really quick checking,
plugged the computer in, tried to see,
why did we lose the CAN bus?
It doesn't seem to make sense.
The whole thing went down.
It wasn't one sensor we lost.
The whole network went down.
And rather than just sit there
while they're trying to figure it out,
we sucked the data out, we put Matt in and sent him out.
This is Matt Bell.
Matt Bell, right.
How would you classify Matt?
I mean, obviously he's the pro in the car,
but he's your regular pro, right?
He's our regular pro,
knows the most about the car,
most experienced, fastest guy we have.
So we're still on our driver rotation sequence.
Everything's kind of good.
Matt goes out and says, man, the car's fine.
It's great.
It's handling fantastic.
Power's good.
Everything's good.
Fantastic.
And so we're like, okay,
so if we can fix this problem, we'll be good.
Problem was, it was hard to figure out
where the problem was coming from.
There might be, I don't know,
15 sensors on that network.
One sensor shorts out or something happens
and it could possibly, it shouldn't,
but it could possibly take the whole network down.
So Ethan and Baptiste,
those guys got their computers,
they're trying to figure it out.
And they think, they come up with,
and I don't know how they figured it out.
They're very smart and they looked at all the stuff
and they think what happened was the timing transponder.
So the cars have little electronic boxes
that when it drives over these lines
that are embedded in the track,
it starts your lap time and ends your lap time.
And it does sector times and everything else.
And that information is sent back to the organizers.
It's how they know your lap times
and how they know how many laps you've done
and all of that.
Well, that timing transponder,
that timing transponder is in the rocker panel
below the door on the car between the front and rear wheel.
It's embedded in there.
And so they supposed that we,
when we got hit in the rocker panel essentially,
it had dislodged with some force that timing transponder
and it had like pulled the wires out of the network
and stopped the communication in the whole network.
So we were trying to prepare,
we have a spare rocker panel
with a timing transponder in there,
but it's a long job to change.
It's probably a half an hour.
It's not like two Zeus fasteners
and you bolt another one on.
The floor has to come off.
It's a major body panel that you don't normally change.
We can change a door in 25 seconds,
but the rocker panel, that'd be like saying,
okay, let's bolt the spare roof on it.
It's just something you don't do.
So what we do have a spare rocker panel,
Andrew Stiddle and the guys went and got that
and made sure it was set and everything.
We knew we were gonna get penalty,
but they were very nice.
They kept us, let us run for,
we could do 10 laps on a stint and they know that.
And at the end of the ninth lap, they penalized us
or they black flagged us.
It wasn't a penalty.
They said, you must come in and fix this now,
right now, this lap, or you can't go back out.
And so that was very nice.
We got to run the whole stint to show how good the car was.
This makes it even more disappointing,
but Matt set one of the fastest,
I think it might've been the third fastest race lap
in the whole class during that time.
So the car was really good.
Matt's like, this thing's fantastic.
And we're like, oh, great.
We have the fantastic car when we can't use it.
Charlie and Matt and Lars and Ori and the whole team
had worked really hard to get a good setup
and it turned out we had one, but we had to come in.
So we came in, put gas in it like you do,
put it back in the garage,
took the old rocker panel off,
plugged the new one in to the network,
just kind of hanging there to see if everything was okay.
I'll plug the new one in.
Thumbs up from Ethan and Baptiste, it all works.
Can busses up, scrutinering information's going.
So we bolted the rocker panel back on,
took 28 minutes.
Anyway, we went back out, we were 10 laps down.
And then we looked at the clock
and there's 20 hours and 30 minutes to go in this race
and you're 10 laps down.
Even in an IMSA race at Daytona,
you're not gonna make up 10 laps,
but you could with enough yellows
and luckily you could make up seven or eight
because the rules are such that they do pass arounds
and final wave buys and there's things IMSA wants
as many cars on the lead lap as possible.
So 10 laps would be pretty hard,
but here at Le Mans, there's none of that.
They do these full course yellows,
which are like if any people have watched Formula One,
it's like the virtual safety car
where it just everybody slows down
and you maintain the gap and then you go again.
So there's no bunching up, there's no pass arounds,
there's no wave buys,
there's no opportunity to get your lap back at Le Mans.
There it just is not.
If you're 10 laps down and you do a really good job,
you're gonna finish 10 laps down.
So there was no chance for any kind of result,
which was pretty, I don't know, deflating.
Yeah, it's like,
and now we're gonna go do 20 more hours like this.
Just banging around.
Yeah, and we're gonna spend,
we're gonna burn up 12 more sets of tires
at $5,000 a set or $1,000 a set.
We're gonna burn all this gas,
we're gonna risk this million dollar race car going,
we're going 180 miles an hour,
like five times on the track on a lap.
And then the big one, I think, the big thought was,
so we could use it for testing.
You can't rent Le Mans, you can't test there.
So we could go out and try some things
and make some pit stops and try some setup stuff
and do that.
Problem is, we don't know what the BOP is gonna be next year.
So are we testing something relevant,
the power we have, the weight we have for next year
and all that, does it really matter?
And you could say, well, we could still learn some stuff.
So now you project to how that looks.
So you're out there and let's say we have this car
that was just ripping fast, 10 laps down.
You come up to the guy who's leading the race,
10 laps ahead of you, and you can pass him
because you're faster than him.
Do you?
Because we've been in that other situation like,
what is this jerk doing?
He's three laps down and he's just ruining the race.
We would pass him and that guy would be like,
what is this guy doing?
Oh, it's cause it's gonna interrupt his flow
and his rhythm and stuff like that.
Or if you come up to him and you can't just blow by him,
you're gonna now battle him, right?
Are you gonna battle?
What is a car 10 laps down doing battling
with the guys on the lead lap?
That's just dumb and not.
Nobody wants to be that guy.
The reverse of it is, let's say another faster car
that comes up on you because we're not running that great.
You're just gonna have to, you would lift, pull over,
let him go by because you don't wanna be the dumb guy
10 laps down holding up the leader.
Again, nobody wants to be that guy.
And so the whole testing thing kinda looked like,
could we really test?
We're either gonna, we're gonna be moving over,
pulling over, all we're gonna be doing is trying
to stay out of the way for 20 hours.
And so we had to make,
a decision and ultimately,
that's the team owners, that's Ori's decision.
And it was decided that to be good stewards of the sport
and not screw up anything,
we just didn't wanna be,
we didn't wanna mess up somebody else's race
because we just wanted to go drive around.
And so we decided to pull the plug.
Car was great, car was running good.
Maybe if we would have kept going,
and we might have finished 20th instead of 24th.
That's not really why we came there,
but we didn't wanna quit either.
None of the guys on the team are quitters.
It was one of those hard decisions
where sometimes the right decision is the hard decision
and maybe not the most fun decision,
but I think everybody on the team saw
that it was the right decision.
It sucked and nobody wanted to do it.
Well, the adrenaline was flowing
and heck, Lars didn't even get to do one lap in the race.
Oh man.
Ori did four stints, Matt did a stint
and Lars never even got in the car.
So, it was tough, but that was the decision that was made.
Some people might think it was the wrong decision.
Some fans might think it was bad,
but it's what we decided to do.
Just don't wanna mess up somebody else's race.
And that's the way this team is.
We're not gonna just go do what's fun
and screw somebody else up.
So, that was our decision.
I think that was an incredibly adult
and responsible and sporting decision, right?
I mean, everybody's seen it.
There's so many people who would get in that position
and be like, A, well, screw it, we don't stop.
And B, I don't know, man,
whatever happens to anybody else is their problem.
And that's the fact that you guys don't look at it that way.
It is proper, but at the same time,
it is a thing that you kinda have to explain a little
because the knee jerk is, well, why stop?
Well, I mean, it's a business.
It costs a lot of money to go out there
and just wear out a car, wear out some tires.
Doesn't gain you anything.
How much time did you spend making that decision?
How long between when Ori stared at the ceiling
and thought about it, and then you guys had an answer.
So, once we put the new rocker panel on it
and the scrutineering can bus came to life
and everything was good, we sent Matt back out
to verify everything was working.
Everything was working great.
They were getting the data, the organizers were happy,
the car was good.
And at that point, Andrew, our team manager,
former team owner guy, went to Ori and had that conversation.
And there was other people involved in the decision.
Ori had people advising him family and Lars
and people who he really respects, advising him.
And when they decided to pull the plug,
we did a couple more laps to explain it to the crew
because you just don't wanna pull the thing in the garage
and say, okay, close the garage door and the crew go what?
So, Andrew did a really good job explaining it to the crew.
So, to answer you, maybe after we went back out,
we probably came in two laps later, didn't take long.
And the procedure there is quite simple.
You, like Imsa does, every team is connected to race control
through an instant messaging system.
Some of them, they're various ones.
But anyway, when you type into race control,
we're planning on retiring the car this next lap.
And there's no problem with that.
They can't say no or whatever.
Come in the garage and once you close that garage door,
they call it the shutter, but it's a garage door.
Once you roll that garage door closed, you're out.
And people have probably seen that at Le Mans,
they're like, oh, that garage door is closed.
They're not racing anymore.
So we roll the garage door down and that was it.
It's such a thing too, cause like you can sit,
was telling somebody at Groton this weekend,
you're just talking about what it's like to be at Le Mans.
And the front straight of most race tracks
is usually the least interesting place to be.
But at Le Mans, there's this long row
of these very narrow garages,
directly perpendicular to the front straight.
And there's a giant grandstand, this big hooded grandstand
to keep sun and rain off of people, for the most part,
across the front straight from those garages.
Basically, if you have binoculars or scope
or sometimes even just a zoom on your phone,
you can sit there and look right down the barrel
of every single team running, just right into the garage.
And on the one hand, that's really cool.
Cause like in the morning, it means that you see
the Toyota guys doing calisthenics in their garage
as a group and you see anybody's blowing bodywork
off the car and putting it back on, hustling three
in the morning, whatever, you have a direct line
of sight into it.
But the other big picture vision on it
is that when you're sitting there,
you can look down and you see those shutters
and they look like, they're not like corrugated
like storage unit doors, but they're similar, right?
Yeah, it's almost like that.
It's like a roll up door, like you've seen
in airplane hangers, the ones that you pull the chain
and it rolls up into a big roll.
The slats are maybe like two inches and hinged, yeah.
So you get this really cool kind of visual explanation
of just what percentage of the field is still running.
Oh, well, hell, there's a third of the garages are closed,
that's a lot, right?
So how, let's start at the beginning here
with the contact, right?
A lot of people tend to think that pro racing
is just an endless series of doorbanks and chrome horns,
just contact all the time, but really,
and especially at Le Mans, it's usually more judicious.
I mean, not always, but usually,
and more often than not, it's accidental.
How often in your experience does a GT team
have contact like that over the course of a race?
So it's non-linear, the amount of contact over time
is non-linear, it should be very low
in the first 18 to 20 hours.
I mean, and you can try to place blame on it,
stuff like that, the organizers,
normally when there's some kind of contact or incident,
you'll see coming up on the race director's messages,
which we get on timing and scoring,
they'll say contact between cars 13,
and I don't remember what number it was, 87,
under investigation, you can even see it in Formula One,
they'll show those under investigation things,
and the stewards will go back and look at the video
and try to come up with it,
if there's any penalties to be given out.
It didn't even come up as under investigation
because it was just a little bump
and already did a little correction and that was that.
Continue on, the other guy didn't spin out, no problem.
The disappointing thing was,
is that that guy tried to hang around the outside
of a car that had clearly passed him,
I mean, they weren't even side by side anymore.
Our rear tire was at his front tire, clearly passed him,
and he tried to hang around the outside of a chicane
that goes left, right, almost immediately left, right,
and it was a no-hopper, and he did that
with 21 hours left to go in the race, risked a lot,
and it was, I won't say it was a driving mistake,
because that's like, oh, I got my braking a little long,
a little late or something like that,
this was an error in judgment, he should have been,
look, the guy passed me, I could,
if that was the last lap of the 24 hours of Le Mans,
for the win, any opportunity, if you can get a nose
on the guy, you're sticking it in there,
and it was just, there was no need for that at that point,
and it's not like Ori could have bailed out of that,
I mean, he had clearly passed the guy
on the inside of the corner, had the corner, no question,
and you would never expect the guy to try to hang
around the outside of you there,
that's when you had clearly gone by him,
not to mention that he had passed him
on the straightaway a couple other times,
and so, I mean, they were battling,
the other car was a little faster in some spots
and had gotten Ori back, so they're having a good race,
but it was an error in judgment
to try to hang on the outside of them there, and anyway.
I love the phrase, it was a no-hoper,
and I'm gonna use that in the rest of my life.
Yeah, it was a no-hoper.
Oh man, yeah, so many things that I've tried
that have been just no-hopers.
Nothing to do with being in a car, yeah, nope.
What, so you said we were better prepared over last year,
talk a little bit about that,
what does that look like?
Because you've been to the mob more than a few times.
How did that change?
What was different this year over last year?
Well, I think the big thing last year is,
and we did a show on it last year,
is the bigness of the event for everybody.
Most of the guys had never been there before.
It is a big event.
There's a lot of pomp and circumstance,
all the ceremonies and tech downtown
and the pictures we take.
I mean, heck, we spent the Saturday before the test day
taking pictures on the front straightaway
and with all the Corvettes, GM cars,
so the Corvettes and the Cadillacs cars
and team pictures and man, there's a lot going on.
And that can be a little overwhelming
and I tried to tell everybody last year to soak that in,
let it overwhelm you a little bit.
Now we came back there this year and we weren't jaded.
We weren't like, oh, we got this, it's easy,
we know what to do.
This isn't that important, it's just another race.
No, that was not it.
We knew it was still a special race,
but we were prepared for what was gonna happen
instead of being like, oh my God,
it's a pit stop contest, this is so cool.
It's like, oh, the pit stop contest, I can't wait.
And we've practiced more and we're better
and we know what we're doing
and we know how they're gonna time it
and how it all works.
So let's just knock this pit stop contest out
and do good, cause that's a fun thing.
We didn't pretend that we had it all nailed
and dialed in and we were experts,
but it made things a little more relaxed.
So that was number one.
Number two is we knew where the areas
of being unprepared were last year,
where we didn't know any better.
So we went there and we went,
I wish we would have done this and this in advance.
And one of those things was we corrected this year
is two weeks before Le Mans,
we went to Aragon in Spain and we did a two day test.
Last year we did a test, but we didn't do it with our car
and we didn't bring our whole crew.
We just wanted to learn the Goodyear tire
cause we're not used to that.
This year we bought the whole crew, our car,
and we did what I would say a proper test at Aragon
for two days.
We practiced the pit stop procedures
that are entirely different than IMSA.
The rules are entirely different.
We got used to the Goodyear tire.
The drivers knew how the setup at Aragon
related to Le Mans.
So we were able to do some things,
try some things there setup wise
that we knew would relate to Le Mans
from our experience last year.
So we went with a really good proper two day test
and we unloaded that way.
So we were just, we knew what to expect.
We knew where the holes were last year
and we plugged those holes and we were just much more calm
and ready to go and understanding
of what we were about to face.
Hi, it's Sam.
Couple quick things here
and I'll let you get back to the show.
So we make it's not the car because we love doing it.
Thankfully other people love it too
because Ross and Jeff and I don't make a profit on this show.
We just keep it going through help
from everybody who listens or watches on YouTube.
Now part of the way we do that
is something called Patreon.
You go there and for a few bucks a month
you get neat perks like bonus episodes,
discounts on the merch we sell
and some free speed secrets training from Ross.
If any of that sounds good,
you can join at patreon.com forward slash not the car.
Other way we keep this show going is new this year.
It's through support from our friends
at BF Goodrich, the tire company.
BF Goodrich likes what we do here.
They believe in grassroots enthusiasm
and they want it to support the show,
which is great because Ross and Jeff and I
actually really do like BFG tires.
We own BFG tires and we even occasionally
get to run races on their tires
in amateur enduro series like a champ car.
We've got some fun stuff planned with them
and for the show this year.
So if you get a chance, give BF Goodrich some love.
They're good folks and their help
makes all of this possible.
Thanks for listening back to the show.
I say this a lot but one of the cool things about that team
is that it's a group of experienced people
who are still relatively new to the sport
in not in entirety but a large percentage of the crew.
How did they look at the old event
this year versus last year?
How did they hit them?
Yeah, I think it was, everybody's still,
it was still like, man, it's cool to be here.
This is a great race.
This is Le Mans.
You can't not, I mean, the guys were there
three or four days before but like the first big thing
is that whole tech thing downtown Le Mans
and that's I say tech inspection and it kind of is
but it's a big show.
Car goes through tech, drivers get interviewed,
big pictures, autograph session,
put the car in a flatbed, take it back to the track.
It starts off that way and you're like, whoa, wow.
But last year we didn't know how does that interrupt your day?
What can you really get done on that day?
Can you get a lockdown?
How long does it take to get the car
back from the tech inspection downtown to the track?
Are you gonna have six hours to work
or 30 minutes to work?
Yeah, we had no idea last year.
So the crew guys from their standpoint,
I didn't see anybody, nobody was like, ah, we got this.
Everybody was like, wow, we're here, this is cool.
Everybody still had that feeling of
we earned the right to be here.
We won that Aiken Award.
We set out the start of the year
to try to win that award in IMSA
which gets you the Le Mans invite.
We did that and nobody gave this to us.
We deserve to be here.
And it was great that Orgy brought everybody on the team
and brought his team.
People in the past who have won a Le Mans invite
have just gone over and then drove
with a current WAC team or a current European team.
But we brought, I mean, we shipped our car.
We shipped, I mean, you can talk to Andrew and Baptiste.
We shipped spare nuts and bolts, spare rolls of tape, zip ties.
And he didn't have to.
Yeah.
Yeah, we didn't have to.
Orgy could have just rented ride someplace
because he had the indoor.
He's gone and done it for him.
And everybody, all the crew guys appreciate that
and they know that and they get the opportunity to go do it.
And we set out some goals.
Ross won't like this because his goal would be
do better than you did before,
do better than last year or whatever.
And I guess, well, maybe that was kind of our goal.
Our whole goal was we wanted to do better than last year
and keep our last year's thing
where we had no crew penalties, which was hard.
So we were hoping for ninth or better
because we were 10th last year.
That didn't work out so good.
We did not get any crew penalties.
But to be fair, we were only subject to crew penalties
for three hours.
I eat, I eat.
But those guys were better.
Which like, you know, that wins a win.
I mean, I'll take it.
We'll take it.
Yeah, we'll take it.
So yeah, everybody did do better.
I mean, the crew was better.
They operated better.
Their pit stops were better.
Their pit stop challenge time was better.
Their consistency was better.
The car prep was better.
There was less long late nights.
So I'm saying we were prepared better
and we operated as a crew better.
And it kind of seems unfair that we didn't do better,
but that's the circumstances.
We didn't, but it wasn't because we did a bad job.
You said the car was quick.
And I know you can't, I mean, you can compare it,
but it's also like squint you to compare it directly
because weather and the ambient track temp
and BOP and everything else.
But did you, was there more relative pace this year
than you guys had carried last year?
For sure.
I mean, in the end, our teammate,
the 33 TF Sport Corvette won the class.
The race engineer on the 33s, a friend of mine,
and I saw him in the airport on Monday morning
we were talking and he's like, man,
he goes, you guys were my biggest threat, my biggest fear.
If we were going to win this thing,
we're going to have to beat you guys
because you had a better car than us.
And that's the race engineer, the guy who won the thing.
So yeah, that just makes it kind of,
I mean, I suppose if you're really slow and out of it
and this happened, you'd be like, well,
all right, we kind of put it out of its misery,
but no, we were fast.
Some people think that if you're out of a race,
you're just like, well, screw it.
And then you're on an airplane five minutes later,
but you clearly weren't.
And that the whole like we're packing up
while everyone is still running
is a hell of an emotional lift.
What happened at that point?
You're out, you roll the shutters down,
and then you just get to like eat a bunch of croissants
and drown your feelings in bread
while you're putting things back in containers.
Yeah, I'm sure there were people on the team
who started looking at flights.
And the problem is you are three and a half hours
by car to Paris and the cars and the vans
and you can take the TGV,
which is like their high speed rail train,
but it doesn't have, it doesn't go every hour.
There's like, there was a TGV at 7 a.m. on Sunday morning.
Ask me how I know, but it was full.
So then you look at flights and everything.
And I think everybody, it was like, we'll just keep going.
Once we tidied everything up
and closed the garage and made sure everything was secure.
What time was it?
Maybe 10 or 11 p.m.
Most of the guys went out and became,
they had never done it before.
They became Le Mans spectators.
They went out to the Dunlop Curve,
which is actually, it's really weird.
It's another Goodyear Curves,
because the Dunlop Bridge is Goodyear.
It doesn't seem right.
70 years, or even longer, right?
That, man, that bridge was the Dunlop Bridge.
It looked like a giant Dunlop tire.
You can see it from the stands.
We still called it the Dunlop Curves
and the Dunlop Bridge, even though it said Goodyear.
It's like Sonoma is still Sears Point
and Mossport is still...
Yeah, you want it to be like,
Goodyear presents the Dunlop Memorial Bridge, right?
It needs that name even if somebody else is sponsoring it.
It just didn't seem right.
So anyway, they went out there and they had a few beers
and watched the race with the spectators
and wandered around and did something
they could never, ever do.
And then everybody got a little bit of sleep,
came back, packed everything up
so that it could be put in the shipping containers
and shipped home and everybody flew home
on their normal Monday flight.
Man, what a hell of a thing.
Yeah, it sucks to do that, like you said,
when everybody else is running and you're like,
huh, we're packing up and all the guys are running
and the TVs are going and you're like,
you really want to watch it?
Do you care anymore?
But you kind of do, so you're looking kind of at the TV.
You're like, am I a fan now or am I still working here?
You're not sure how to act?
It's weird.
But you're right, there's something about it.
Even when you're packing up at the end of the race
and at the end of a long enduro
and everything's gone awful,
you're still doing the same thing everybody else is, right?
You're still in that kind of weird summer camp vibe
or long day at work vibe or like, yep, there we go.
I don't know if it just helps process
that sort of thing or not.
I've never been in that position in a propatic, but man.
It was weird.
How quickly does your head go to something else after that?
How quickly do you start thinking about another Glenn
or whatever the hell else is coming up next?
For me, about 83 seconds after the shutter hit the ground.
I was like, I love that.
That is such a Giff Brown answer.
All right, Watkins Glenn, six hours.
Okay, driver rotation, yeah, that'll work.
Mission tires, how many sets do we get?
Okay, we're not quad-standing anything there.
We're gonna do this and we're gonna do that.
Your head tends to work like mine
in that anytime you do something that doesn't go well,
you immediately start making the mental list of things,
like logging the lessons and the things
to think about for next time.
What, when we're through your head,
can you relocate that sensor in that harness,
that piece of the bus?
And you're exactly right.
I have a thing on my notes app on my phone
that I start putting those down
from the time I get to the track.
When something happens, I'm like,
oh, we could do this better.
I've already had a pretty good chunk of items.
And then after that,
the one thing that's really good about my job
is I have surrounded by really smart people.
And the last thing I need to do is think about,
well, I do think about it, just what you said.
Could you relocate that sensor?
And I don't even pick up my phone to type that in
because I know the guys, I know Baptiste already has
seven different ways that he could solve that problem.
Or he will look into, could he mount it on a vibration thing?
Could he move it to a new place?
Is it homologated?
Is it legal to do that?
Could you make the wires stronger?
Could you make the mounts stronger?
Is it legal to do that?
Could we make the rocker panel quicker to change
in case it happened again?
He is, he will be 10 steps ahead of me on that.
So all I do is pick up my phone
and I go, Baptiste has got that covered.
If I think somebody doesn't have that covered,
then I'll write it down and ask the question
in one of our engineering meetings.
But most of that's, it's redundant.
I don't even need to ask that question.
It'll be solved.
And all I'll hear was we can change our rocker now
in three seconds.
We tried it four times in the shop and we can do that.
Or that sensor is that transponder is now mounted
here and here and it's legal.
And we're going to get a homologation variation
because Pratt and Miller has talked to the ACO
and we can move that.
I don't know what the answer will be.
What I do absolutely 100% know is
that there will be an answer.
And that's what makes it great to work with these guys.
Well, what's the old line like safety regulations
are written in blood?
You know, the competitiveness of a really good team
anywhere is really just written in moments.
The log of moments in somebody's head
or a collective where people have gone, ah, shit.
It's just like the things that you put in
and you're like, nope, we're going to protect against that
next time by doing this.
And then, you know, stack that up to infinity
and you have, you know, at the very top,
you have teams like a Mercedes or a Pansky or...
Those are the kind of things that I always think about.
I ask myself, is this a problem
that only Jeff can solve on the team?
And there are very few of those on the race team
that only I can solve.
So if the answer is no, other people can solve it.
They're probably smarter at it than me.
So I let them solve it.
And all I have to do is kind of look and see
if they're actually working on solving it.
The answer is always yes at this team.
And so I just, I don't worry about it.
It's the great thing about having that kind of mentality.
And I will say it extends to Pratt and Miller and GM
and their approach to it too.
The last thing they want is one of their cars
to drop out because there was some damage.
There'll be like a dog on a bone on that thing.
I know this isn't quite how your head works,
but did you go take a moment to be a fan?
I mean, you've been doing this longer than I've been alive.
Like, did you go poke around the paddock
or I don't know, eat a crack?
Yeah, I was like, I think I was more like,
man, I wish this race was, I wish it would stop.
If I can't race, I don't want anybody else to race either.
I just wish they would stop.
So I went back to the motor home.
I didn't even turn the broadcast on.
I tried to pretend the race wasn't happening,
but it was loud, so it kept on going on.
Then at one time in the middle of the night,
it got really quiet and I'm like, is that a red flag?
No, it was a safety car, but I didn't.
We did think, we said we qualified last, which we did.
And nobody was, but nobody was like, oh, we qualified last.
Because the last time we qualified last
in a 24 hour race was Daytona 2025 and we won it.
So when we qualified last, we're like, perfect.
We got them right where we want them.
Yeah, there are a bunch of jokes there
and I'm not smart enough to make, but I don't know.
I just, I love the, I've got you where I want you
when you're pinned, but so what,
how do you pack up from something like that
and kind of compartmentalize your head?
And I know it's probably gotten easy
because you've done it so much.
But I'd imagine there was a point in your career
where it wasn't always so easy
to just kind of put that on a shelf.
I don't know if there was one point when that happened,
but the greatest thing and I tell people
when we have, when there is a bad event,
I said the best thing about when you have a bad race
like that, I say, well, this is not the last car race
in history, right?
There'll be more.
And they're like, yeah, like two weeks, Watkins Glen.
I'm like, great, let's go.
It would be really disappointing
if that was the last auto race you ever had a chance
to try to do good in, but it's not.
The one thing I know is we can't pull that shutter
with the chain open and fix everything
and go back out and be on the lead lap.
We can't reverse it anymore.
That's done.
So I will try to spend time to make sure
that doesn't happen at the next race,
but to worry about that it happened at this race
is a waste of time.
Let's spend that effort and that mental capacity
on something that's whether we should run Ori
for two stints at the start of the race of Watkins Glen
or try to get them three and how long a race should we give them.
I'll spend the time on that rather than,
oh man, that was terrible.
Yeah, it was, but move on.
I don't know, it's really interesting to me
because nobody gets into racing because they have to
and nobody gets into the sport because they don't like it.
But the notion, I love talking to people
about how they balance that because at the top, top level,
everybody's there because they love
and really care about something deep within the sport.
And yet, everybody knows somebody
or more than a few somebodies who's been doing it so long
that they're jaded and they don't care
and whatever love they had for it is gone.
And they're just in a place where it's just another
TPS report on a Tuesday, I can't wait to retire.
The thing that I think is interesting about you and Ross
is that you, like a lot of people,
you've managed to maintain still really loving it.
That's such a dichotomy to keep in your head.
It's just funky.
I love it.
I think it's maybe you have to have some personal,
like really personal things that nobody else would notice
that you've done that you're proud of
that literally nobody else would notice.
It's like, man, that change I made on that spreadsheet
that tells me when we're gonna be in the pit box
to the second really worked this weekend.
That thing was dialed in.
I'm glad I spent four hours trying to get that right
in my office because it worked great.
Nobody notices that.
Nobody cares, but I do.
And so those are the things that kind of make you
wanna keep doing it.
That's really weird.
What was your favorite thing about Lamar, 2026?
What was Cell D56?
I just, that one right there, just the big emotional hit.
Right.
Yeah, it's those kind of small things
that you just try to get better all the time.
And we talk about it on the team a lot.
Everybody works for that 1% better every weekend.
And not 10%, 1% if you can just do a little bit better
every weekend than what you did last time
and you look for those areas,
then that actually makes it personally fun.
And it helps the whole team collectively too.
I think it's a good attitude.
Nobody is gonna let our Lamar result
affect the effort, the fun,
or the attitude or the culture
that they have going forward.
I give you an T or we're gonna go to Watkins Glen
and it's gonna be like,
we'll be firing on all cylinders.
I think that's a good way to end it.
Anything else for we put a bow on this?
Anything on top of your head?
No, it's just one of those races
that I suppose that you can work super hard
do a really good job, be really focused.
And...
Bang. Bang.
That doesn't guarantee anything.
It guarantees that you might get a chance,
but everybody will reflect back
about what they could have done different.
I guarantee you, even though it wasn't Ori's quote,
a fault, he's like,
wow, if I would have just maybe not passed that guy.
And everybody would say, no, you were cleanly by him.
That was not a problem of yours or anything.
But everybody will think about
what could we have done different to fix that.
I hoping that those thoughts are less than 60 seconds.
And you go, could I done, no, yeah, no.
And then we're just onto the next one.
And that's the way it's been in the past with this team.
So I think we'll be fine.
Right on.
Well, thanks for diving into this.
I know it probably is in a place in your head
where you didn't want to bring it back up,
but I appreciate it, man.
No, I mean, that's what we talk about, right?
This was distinctly not the car.
This was a lot of people who were disappointed, right?
I think it's important we talk about
the not good results as much as we talk about the good results
and how that makes everybody feel and what it's like.
So yeah, it was good to talk about.
Right on.
Well, if that's our show,
which means it is time to read us out.
It's not the car is written, produced and built by us.
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As always, thank you for listening.
Jeff, you want to say it?
Have fun.
About this episode
A Toronto IMSA Corvette team (13 Autosport) recounts a brutal 2026 Le Mans: qualified last, finished last, and learned plenty despite feeling “better prepared.” The turning point came when driver Ori Fadani was battling in traffic and got hit in the second chicane—no obvious damage, but the team later discovered the scrutineering CAN bus went down. To avoid an unknown penalty, they pitted, swapped a rocker panel/timing transponder, and still lost race time. The car was fast—Matt Bell even set one of the quickest laps—yet electronics rules and repair logistics ended their run.
INTC’s Jeff Braun had to do it. Just a few weeks ago, only a few hours into that epic race, with a car still fast and healthy.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans. A GT3 Corvette. Months of fighting just to make the grid. Maybe you’d make the same decision—pull into the garage, start packing for home. Maybe you’d double down, scarf a bucket of croissants, have the guys strap in and send it. We’re all different.
INTC co-host Jeff Braun has spent decades in pro road racing. He’s won Daytona, Sebring, and championships. He came back from this year’s Le Mans looking forward, as he always does.
So we talked about that, and about what happened in France. And how you learn to keep your head up when all your plans go up in smoke.
This show changes format weekly, because squirrel. We call this format “RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES.”
This episode was produced by Sam Smith.
Thanks, as always, to our friends at BFGoodrich for supporting the show!
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FREE 115-page BFGoodrich High-Performance Driving Guide written by Ross Bentley:
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.
